The Hall of Mirrors
by OneMagician
Summary: Rumbelle AU, sequel to Raven: After losing Belle, Rumpelstiltskin searches for a way to destroy Morrigan. When Roland goes missing and the book is stolen, the sorcerer takes Henry on an incredible journey to the Ice Palace and begins teaching him to use his Gifts. Meanwhile, Belle finds herself back in Storybrooke with Red and Whale... and an angry fairy queen.
1. Brimstone Butterflies

_**Sadly, I still don't own any of the OUAT characters or places in this third story either. If I did, season three of the show wouldn't have Rumple in a kennel, Bae dead, Greenie on a broomstick or soap operas down at Granny's. It would look a bit like this right now:**_

1. Brimstone Butterflies

Belle found herself down on her hands and knees in the middle of Main Street, gasping for air. Her heart was racing as she scrambled to her feet, looking down at herself incredulously before letting her eyes roam about the abandoned town junction. She was wearing the twenty-first century clothing she'd left here in, and she guessed she was alone in Storybrooke, though she could faintly hear the sound of an engine way off in the distance. Noise carried in places that were reigned by silence, so the car she thought she was hearing might have been out on the old Woodlane Road beyond the Toll Bridge and the town limits.

Her nose was running, and she was a bit dizzy as she began walking down the road aimlessly, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. She wiped her nose on the heel of her hand for the want of a kleenex and blinked wearily at the rising sun on the horizon beyond the docks. It had been dark when she'd died at Rumple's castle, and she had no memory of what had happened after that. Her last recollection was that of her husband's desperate face and his bloodstained hands stroking back wet tangles of hair from her face.

Tears began spilling from her eyes, and she did nothing to stifle the sobs that were shaking her; there was no one to hear, so she thought she might as well unabashedly bawl her eyes out, if she felt like it. It occurred to her that she might be dreaming this, but she doubted it by the way she was hurting, so it was very probable that she'd been returned here for some reason or other, while everyone she loved was back in the Enchanted World. She noted that she didn't have the dagger on her, but that was hardly important now, she decided, after she'd discovered that she was too warm in her jacket. It was already early summer here; whole swarms of brimstone butterflies were fluttering restlessly all over the trees and shrubs by the sidewalk. Time moved faster in the World Without Magic, and she could feel herself speeding through the day, though she'd hardly moved.

There was a dull ache manifesting in her lower back, and it soon turned into a throbbing pain in her abdomen as she slowly walked towards to clock tower to take a closer look at the dial. She clenched her fists when it was followed by a small trickle of blood in her panties and doubled over, trying to calm herself. _Please_, she thought, _not this, not now!_

A beige SUV had just cleared the crossing and was coming towards her. It stopped, and Red jumped out, calling her name, surprise and worry alternating on her face. More hesitantly than his front-seat passenger, Victor Whale stayed behind in the car for a moment and watched as Red hurried towards Belle, cursing his luck. He closed his eyes for a moment, wishing this would go away, but when it didn't, he sharply whacked the steering wheel with his hand, and followed Red out of the vehicle to see what was going wrong and keeping them here this time.

XXXxxxXXX

Each of the children that were lining the path to the memorial stone was holding a brightly colored butterfly made from scraps of silk; they were all aware of what had happened and why they were gathered here. Both Archie and Pastor Winslett had been talking to the families that had been bereaved, and the Pastor's wife was working through some of the incomprehensible reasoning with the children old enough to be asking questions. They'd made these little tokens for everyone who'd lost someone, and Rumple was the first to receive his from Roland.

The little boy, accompanied by his father and Emma, held out a small yellow butterfly to the sorcerer, who took it and looked down at it in the palm of his hand like he'd never seen such a thing before, thanking the child quietly. Robin went around the boy and awkwardly half embraced the older man, patting his shoulder, before he quickly turned away and swiped at his eyes. Today, the pain of losing Marian was present in his heart as though it had been only yesterday, and he could still barely believe that they had all been there, all of them expecting trouble, and not one of them had been able to help Belle.

Emma cupped Rumple's cheek with her hand and kissed the other in silence, a tear tracing down the side of her face. There was nothing she could say. Belle had died to save Henry, and there was nothing she could ever do to repay that debt; nothing she could ever say to the broken man standing in front of her that would ease his suffering.

Rumple was still standing there, staring at the stone long after the others had finally gone. The first barn owl of the evening was swooping down from one of the castle towers towards the forest. It was getting chilly in the fading light, but for the first time in the ten days since Belle had gone, he was glad to feel the wind in his face and the air in his lungs. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, picturing a lemon colored Brimstone coming to life and taking to its wings, as he gently released the delicate creature he'd conjured from Roland's silken gift.

"Teach me how to do that?" Henry asked from behind him, momentarily startling the sorcerer.

The corners of his lips curved upward when turned to note the fiery resolve in the boy's eyes, contrasted by the crooked smile he was offering to a man that had once frightened him just by standing next to him in the same room. Rumple nodded curtly, and put his arm around the boy's shoulders as they began walking back to the castle. "That I will," he promised, "that, and so much more."

XXXxxxXXX

"My baby," Belle sobbed as Whale helped her straighten, debating on whether to carry her to the car, rather than let her walk there. "I think I'm losing my baby," she repeated helplessly as he picked her up.

"We don't know that," he replied soothingly, straightening, "Don't worry, we'll sort this out."

She wasn't heavy, but he wasn't in form, and he nearly broke his back getting Belle into the car. Red looked at him questioningly. He shrugged his shoulders, shaking his head at her slightly, and got in the driver's seat, while Red climbed in the back with Belle so that she could hold her friend.

Victor Whale, who'd made up his mind to leave this godforsaken town for good with Red about a half a dozen times, whether or not he kept his memories afterwards, ran a red traffic light and sped towards the hospital. The Blue Fairy had been very specific on the consequences of crossing the town line this time round when she'd dictated the conditions of their little coexistence, but she wasn't keeping them here and had left it up to them to decide their fate. He felt really cheated, though, as – yet again – it was becoming obvious that no one was going anywhere today, especially not him. He didn't give a damn about some dwarf's hand needing stitches, the fractured and hurting arm of a bummed-out pirate, or the leaky cooling unit at Granny's diner, but these things kept happening whenever they were ready to go, and it aggravated him beyond measure.

Red had finally agreed to come with him, since they'd found they weren't going to be of much help to Tinkerbell. None of them were going back to the Enchanted World either way, so they'd packed their bags time and again in the last weeks, intent on starting over somewhere less creepy than here – that would be_ anywhere but here_. He'd almost been expecting trouble this morning, but hadn't counted on someone from that other world just literally popping up in the middle of the road today of all days. He couldn't help but wonder how Belle had done that, since the portal was sealed.

She'd grown very quiet on the backseat, but Red felt her trembling, and she didn't know whether this was from shock, fear, or, at most improbable, cold. She awkwardly took off her flimsy cotton jacket, minding the cast on her arm that was to come off sometime in the next days, and covered Belle's shoulders with the thin fabric, hoping that it would do her some amount of good.

"What on earth is going on back home?" Red mumbled, shortly before they turned into the emergency ambulance drive. "What happened to you, sweetheart?"

Whale killed the engine and jumped out to organize one of the wheelchairs that had been left standing around under the roof extension. Red hardly expected an answer from Belle as she strained to open the door, but the one she got, when Belle finally stopped staring at the lemon colored butterfly perishing on the back shelf disturbed her.

"Death," Belle said quietly. "Too much death."

Red's brow crinkled as she opened the door and shimmied out of her seat, ready to help Belle. Whale was back presently and looked equally downcast at what he thought he'd heard her say. This day was getting better and better.

"Come on," he said, "let's get you inside."

XXXxxxXXX

"Roland's gone," Bertha wheezed, meeting Rumple and Henry halfway into the kitchen. "We're all so worried, Robin is beside himself!"

They had entered the castle by the back door because Rumple had been hoping for one of her good bread rolls before he was going to start tackling the books and documents in the library on the three daughters of Ernmas; he had to find Raven, and he had to destroy Morrigan. However, he could see that Bertha was very upset, and the sorcerer put his thoughts of justice and vengeance alike to the back of his mind for a moment, realizing that the here and now of a little boy gone missing was more important, and forgot about his empty stomach.

"What do you mean, _he's gone_?" he demanded. "He'll be about here somewhere – this isn't the first time he's gone off by himself, is it?"

Robin came in from the hall behind the flustered elderly woman trying to catch his breath, and the sight of him confirmed to Rumple what Bertha had just told him. "No," the archer admitted, "But we've looked everywhere. Nobody has seen him since the service, and as far as we can tell, he's neither in the castle nor out on the encampment."

The bowman had been convinced that the boy would walk up to the castle with Mrs. Winslett and the other children from her group, but after the teacher had lost sight of him, she assumed that he'd opted to go with Robin and Emma. When she discovered that he hadn't, they'd started alerting everybody who knew Roland and set about looking for him on the grounds. They hadn't found him in any of his usual hide-outs, and Robin's men had begun turning the stables upside down and going through the forbidden parts of the dungeons.

Rumple nodded slowly, rubbing his bristly chin as he raked his mind for a means to speed up the search or conduct it otherwise.

Henry stared into space for a moment, trying to think of the places Roland liked to go that none of the grown-ups present might know of. He'd grown so fond of the loveable five-year-old who seemed to be following him around constantly since Raven had gone, that it bothered him to think anything might have happened to his little shadow. Something came to mind, and he hurried off. Robin took note and went after him, while the sorcerer headed straight for the great hall, where he kept an enchanted map in his vault that could be used to locate someone locally with a drop of blood from a relative. It would at least help them to determine whether or not Roland was still on the castle perimeter.

"I was looking at the book with him upstairs earlier, and maybe he went back to it," Henry explained, racing up the main staircase ahead of the archer. Robin was one of the few people who knew about the book because the sorcerer trusted him, and he'd let Henry know that. Henry liked the open sincerity of Rumpelstiltskin's roguish Hand, and he'd decided he didn't even mind that Emma seemed to be spending a lot of time in Robin's company over the last few days. He hadn't missed that this was bothering Baelfire, but didn't like to think that thought through. He had other concerns, and the grown-ups would take care of themselves.

Henry had also brought Mrs. Winslett into the loop about the book, because he'd discovered that she was writing down what had been going on since everybody had left Storybrooke. She'd been fascinated, and was recently spending large portions of her evenings delving into its tales and taking notes, transcribing the stories to make a new copy of it for the library, since there was no way the original was ever going to find its way there. She'd gotten about half way through, working far into the night on most occasions, and he knew she was making progress on the research she was putting in about its content at every spare minute. He'd been hoping this might help him find out what had become of Raven.

They hastened down the third floor corridor and climbed the side stairs to the narrow, but spacious attic space that was being used for a temporary Kindergarten of sorts. It was getting dark, and the bowman lit the oil lamp that was suspended from a short chain on a cast-iron rail above the wooden baby gate that blocked the wide entrance at the top. He lifted the stiff safety handle on the right hand section, turned it to secure the opening mechanism, and swung the barred element back on its hinges.

At about nine hundred square feet, the children's day care facility was comfortably accommodated; the low ceiling of the large room was slightly sagging, and the bare rafters were showing, but there were windowed dormers at regular intervals to provide for extra height and sufficient light throughout. Well-worn rugs of all shapes and sizes had been spread out over the creaky floorboards, and warm hues on the freshly painted walls created a cozy atmosphere. A hodgepodge of room dividers and rickety furniture partitioned the available space in between the supporting beams sensibly; old matrasses and seating cushions covered in neatly mended blankets and sheets made up the children's napping corner at one end, snugly closed in by some folding screens, and an array of makeshift toys, board games and drawing-slates sat in shelves and boxes and on small tables that had been arranged around the rest of the loft.

Henry and Robin crossed the complaining floor towards a battered old mahogany wardrobe at the far end of the room. The boy opened the doors of the aged closet and pushed back hangers of cast-off clothing and coats to reveal the rear boarding, scrambling inside. He groped around for the two catches that released the false back and soon found them, grinning out at Robin mischievously. Twisting the small fasteners near the middle and the bottom of the closet, he pressed firmly against the wooden panel, and it opened up right through the hind wall and into a secret room beyond the one the bowman was still standing in.

"I'm impressed," Robin admitted, ducking through the narrow space behind Henry, "How did you come across this?"

Henry looked back at him briefly, an impish gleam worthy of his grandfather in his eyes. "There's very little I don't know about this castle anymore, and Mrs. Winslett does her writing here now."

The room they were entering was tiny compared to the other one. It smelled faintly of dust, even though it had obviously been given a thorough cleaning and airing recently; the sun heated up the old roof structure during the days, and the beams below the heavy shingles were seasoned, aching and moaning with age. The oakwood felt every temperature variation and emitted a distinct odor of its own that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but simply present. The outer layer of the whitened clay in the vaults of the timbre framed walls was beginning to crack and crumble off in places, exposing small amounts of the mixture it was composed of. This added to the flying particles in the air, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed, the archer thought, looking around.

A few scruffy cushions had been set out on the red carpeted floor near the room's solitary window, and books on folklore and history borrowed from the library were scattered in between them, markers protruding from the volumes to show where they'd been opened last. There were more journals, a sketching pad and a sheaf of writing-paper in a small wobbly shelf propped up against the inner wall. A globe sat on the writing desk that was facing them in the center of the room, a quill and a corked fountain of ink next to it by a stack of neatly hand-written notes. The first sheets from the pile had been swept off and lay haphazardly strewn over the table. Two mismatched chairs had been toppled over on the floor. Henry drew breath, realizing what had happened here.

"He's not here… but the book's gone, too," he observed, picking up one chair after the other to set them right. "I left it on the desk because I wanted to go see my grandfather before… you know… and Roland and I went downstairs together."

"The book…" Robin breathed. "We all know who's after the book – whoever's taken it might have Roland. Perhaps he got in the way."

"Perhaps he did," Rumple stated dryly, as he entered the room through the back of the closet. "We'll see in a minute." He unfolded and spread out the large, worn and darkened map on the writing desk, It depicted a layout of the castle and its grounds, as well as a part of the surrounding fields and forest. The sorcerer took a small hunting knife from his belt and gestured it at Robin. "If you would…?"

Robin held out his hand, and Rumple quickly pricked his thumb with the pointy tip of the blade. He guided it over the map and squeezed lightly, holding it there. A few drops of Robin's blood fell onto the parchment, pooled, and then skidded away from its center towards the forest, seeping into the velum and disappearing as though they'd never been there. _The boy had been taken._

XXXxxxXXX

"You're alright," Whale told Belle when he'd found what he was looking for with the sonographic scanner he was guiding across her abdomen, causing her some discomfort. He turned the small rectangular screen so she could see the grey and white contours he was marking with red dotted lines for measurements. "That bleeding was most probably just some spotting, since it's stopped already. It happens, sometimes, but the baby's just fine, Belle."

"Are you sure?" she asked, anxiously glancing at Red, who was standing on the other side of the examination table. Red gently gave her arm a little squeeze when Whale nodded slowly, readjusting the settings on the ultrasound unit.

Not being used to handling this machine _at all_, he had to wing it and finally concede that he wasn't much of a practitioner in this day and age. He did a lot better on other things; things that weren't quite so filigree and didn't involve so much technical know-how and detailing as gynecology. He liked to start his day by getting his morning coffee and paper from the mousy little gofer that had been around when things had still been up and working before taking his first patient. No coffee this morning or any morning, unless he got it himself. He liked to get his x-rays _on_ polyester from some pretty little nurse _in _polyester that he would consider taking home a bit later in the evening. No x-rays for pregnant women, just finicky, quirky little computers with dials and panels you couldn't operate if your fingers were normal-sized. He liked to get his blood results from a qualified lab technician, and not have to check out the biochemistry arduously by himself in that basement prison. No doubt he'd be spending half the day on Belle's down there, now that he had two vials of hers sitting on his desk for grouping and what toxicological risk estimates he could do from here without sending them away.

"You need to rest," he told her, dispensing some more gel on her belly and spreading it with the transducer, "and we're going to have to medicate that blood pressure."

Ruby had told him that Belle had been through a lot in the time they'd been wandering around the forest, and they had no idea what had been going on there since, so it came as no surprise that she was derailing, even this early on. Somehow, he couldn't help but thank his lucky stars that he hadn't ended up in the Enchanted World along with the rest of them.

By the way she was tormenting her lower lip he could tell that this information hadn't been very assuring, and he decided that there was nothing like a nice clear visual of a balloon-shaped, oversized head and miniature arms on an undefinable torso to get mommy's mind off the worrying for a moment, or so he'd heard, so he cautiously moved the scanner around her abdomen some more to find a better angle for profiling the fetus. "See this? That would be the head," he explained, running a red arrow over and around the image on the screen so she could tell. "And this is one hand…" he went on, pointing it out to her "… and there's the other one."

Belle's mouth came open, and she tried to commit every detail of the fuzzy image on that screen to her memory as Red made small noises of delight at her side. There it was – her baby. She was actually watching her child shift about inside her, seemingly turning this way and that, safe and sound even after all that had gone wrong since she'd discovered that she'd been overdue at the worst possible time in her life. It was next to a miracle. _Maybe it was a miracle._

"Can you tell if it's a boy or a girl yet?" Red asked Whale, excitedly coming around the cot to get a closer look at the ghostly shape of the small fetus.

"No," he replied absently, printing some of the better quality pictures for Belle, "it's too early, but maybe next month – if Belle wants to know, that is." He quirked an eyebrow at her, but shrugged and went back to what he was doing when she didn't respond right away.

Belle hadn't thought about wanting to know anything, because she'd never even considered the possibility cropping up, not in the Enchanted World. They didn't have electrical light there, never mind ultrasound. She'd have been happy to find out what sex her baby was when the time came. Perhaps she still would. This wasn't a problem, and she was just glad they'd both survived, somehow, unlikely as it was. And then it hit her: Rumple wasn't here, and he would never know. He would never see this, because she'd lost him all over again.

Whale saved several more pictures in Belle's data file before noisily disposing of the latex gloves he'd been wearing and wiping the transducer with a paper towel. He placed it back in its holder and handed Belle some more of the grey wipes to clean off the gel from her belly. Then, he rolled his chair over to a small desk in the corner, flicked on the light switch, and absurdly began filling out a form he soon realized no one would ever be looking at. For lack of anything better to occupy himself with while Belle finished dabbing at the mess he'd made of her and got fully dressed, he stayed where he was and took her printouts from the slot in the unit.

Red took them from him and turned to hand them to Belle, who was sitting up on the edge of the examination table, and swiping at her eyes again. Red waited for her to stand up, and put her arms around the miserable young women, not minding her cast.

"I'm so glad you're alright, and that the baby is, too," she said softly. "You'll see, everything's going to be just fine."

Belle gave a little laugh and mumbled something noncommittal in return, trying to muster a smile.

Whale swiveled his chair back across the floor, making Red smirk at the involuntarily comical look of him doing that, and handed Belle a prescription. She looked at him quizzically, inclining her head and asking herself where this was going. She had no idea why he would write out a prescription when there was no one at the pharmacy to put it together for her. Picturing herself trying to find the meds he'd noted within the depths of the innumerable drawers in the back room of the apothecary, she found that she couldn't even decipher his handwriting.

"Well…" he began, catching on that she was missing his point, "We'd need to swing by the drugstore and check if Sneezy has that on stock, because the hospital stores are used up."

**OOOoooOOO**

**The next chapter will see some movement at the Dark Castle, as Rumple sets about finding out who is behind the kidnapping. Henry will begin his first lessons in magic, while back in Storybrooke, Belle will be learning to breathe... and fight back at fate.**


	2. The Goblin King

2. The Goblin King

Belle couldn't believe her eyes. Grumpy, _Leroy_, was leaning against the counter, sipping his coffee as though this was any normal working day. He was as scruffy as he'd ever been; his untidy beard a streaky tangled mess, more grey than black, and his hair unkempt beneath a cap that was just as urgently in need of a wash as his filthy hands were.

Doc sat on his favorite stool at the counter, reading a tattered old newspaper that seen better times. There was a picture of the President's State of the Union address on the front page, so Belle figured it had to be from around the time Pan had cast the second curse. The elderly man's glass of iced tea was empty, and he was reaching for a refill from the pitcher when Whale took a seat next to him, followed by Tom Clancy.

Bashful, or _Jeffrey_, was just coming in from the kitchen, stirring a pan of bacon with a wooden spatula. He was fixing some BLTs straight onto the plates that he'd set out on the worktop. Red's ridiculous pink frilly apron looked hilarious on him, and it made Belle smile, dipping her head and biting her lip as she did so for fear of offending him if he were to catch that.

Tom had told her they'd all be here for lunch today, just as they were every day, but it took the miners a while to realize that the other three had arrived in company, since she'd ducked in behind Tom and Whale. Red was the last to enter behind her, taking another wary look around the sidewalk before closing the door quietly.

When Jeffrey looked up from what he was doing and his eyes met Belle's, the frying pan slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor, startling the other dwarves. Hot fat and pieces of bacon went all over the counter and the floor, and he jumped back from it just in time to save himself some unpleasant scorching. Leroy's astounded gaze wandered from his clumsy friend to the unexpected guest he was staring at incredulously, and his own face went blank.

He set down his mug too abruptly, sloshing coffee over his hand, and took a few hesitant steps towards her. "Well, look at that," he declared, shifting his eyes from Belle to meet Red's. "At this rate, you'll be reopening for public business."

XXXxxxXXX

"Hey," Rumple breathed, as he crossed the floor towards Mrs. Winslett, who was hunched over her cluttered reading desk in the hidden attic room behind the Kindergarten.

"Hey, yourself," she replied, briefly looking up at him, a weary smile on her lips.

There were two towering piles of books on either side of the volumes that lay opened before her, and more were heaped on the floor. The oil lantern dangerously balancing atop one of the piles on the desk was burning low, and she looked as tired as he felt. He'd been out most of the day with a search party scouring the woods for Roland, just to be sure that the boy hadn't merely ventured off after all, while the teacher with a knack for history and research had been working on finding out where Raven might have taken Morrigan. Rumple was fairly sure that there was a connection between the two occurrences, since the book had gone missing when the boy had, and there was currently only one person he could think of who would do anything to get her hands on that book.

Raven wasn't strong enough to deal with Morrigan on her own, and Rumpelstiltskin was determined to find a way to destroy the evil fairy once and for all. Looking for the sisters was really the same as looking for Roland and the book; if the boy was still alive, he'd be with whoever had been engaged to procure the ancient writings for Morrigan. This would give the sorcerer a small time window, but the longer it took them to find out how and where better to employ their efforts than running around in the forest, the less chance there was of getting the lad back unharmed, so he'd asked the teacher to get a head start on the literature he'd collected over the centuries. Rumple had _hoped_ to find her still here tonight, but, given the late hour, he hadn't really _expected_ her to be. Neither had he presumed to find Henry here now.

His grandson had fallen asleep in a corner of the small room, huddled down on some oversized cushions. Another half a dozen books that he must have brought here from the library were scattered around him on the soft red carpet. Mrs. Winslett had tucked a woolen blanket around him sometime after he'd started snoring lightly from the cold that was blocking his nose. Rumple crouched down to pull the covering back over him where it had slipped from his shoulders, shuddering to think that it might just as well have been him instead of Roland they'd be out looking for – but on the other hand, Henry had been so much better watched than the smaller boy. He was surprised that Emma had allowed him to stay up here, though maybe she was glad that he was, knowing Rumple had cast extra wards around the door to ensure that no one would be sticking their nose in on the research going on here. He'd probably been kept occupied reading up on the legends and tales of this part of the Enchanted World all day long, safe and sound and enjoying himself here doing so.

The Kindergarten teacher had been jotting notes on a sheet of velum with a quill, and every inch of the available space was covered in her small neat handwriting. Some passages were underlined, and significant terms had been overwritten boldly several times for the lack of a twenty-first century textmarker in bright red to highlight important findings. He could see she'd very been busy, when he straightened up and turned his attention to her. She was absently scratching the tatty grey tiger tabby that was curled up on one of the opened books beside her, purring contentedly.

"Found anything?" he asked in a low voice, so as not to wake Henry.

She nodded, stifling a yawn, and carefully put down the quill on its wooden tray; she'd splotched enough ink over plenty of the precious writing material since she'd started transcribing Henry's book to have learned her lesson.

"Lots of things," she affirmed, and gently pulled the cat off of the tome it had been lying on to show Rumpelstiltskin a wash drawing of a large, pale brown owl with a flat, white heart-shaped face.

He quirked his eyebrows at her questioningly, as she set the liquid, persistently purring cat down on the floor, encouraging it to move on with a gentle nudge. Unimpressed, the stubborn creature stayed exactly where it had been put.

"A barn owl," Mrs. Winslett explained, making her statement sound like a question, while the tabby yawned and stretched to twice her length luxuriously at Rumple's feet, not letting him near her mistress.

"Well, I know what a barn owl looks like," the sorcerer retorted tersely, wondering what she was getting at, and growing slightly irritated by the crickety-crick of threads being pulled from the rug by sharp and pointy little claws catching in the looped pile. _That annoying cat was smiling up at him,_ he thought, barely resisting the temptation of turning it into a bunny.

The Pastor's wife threw her hands up in exasperation at herself, suddenly realizing that she wasn't making much sense. She moved some of the books about on her desk until she'd found what he needed to see so he'd get what she was trying to tell him. Producing the long dark brown primary remex of a large bird of prey, she held it out to him, momentarily pressing her mouth into a thin line.

"When I came up here in the morning, I found this on the floor by the window."

He took the flight feather and inspected it closely. "And this is from a barn owl?"

"It is."

"In here?" he inquired sharply, jabbing a finger at the floor.

She nodded. "It _could_ have been brought in by accident," she mused, "but we're on the _fourth_ floor here, and I cleaned this room yesterday."

"And… you think this has something to do with Roland and the book disappearing?"

Mrs. Winslett pushed her chair back and went over to the window, hugging herself against the chilly night air that was leaking in through the cracks in the frame. The world outside was pitch black, and she thought of Robin's little boy being out there somewhere for the second night running; perhaps cold and scared at this moment.

She'd been pouring over page upon page of fairy history in here for the last twelve hours, and she was stiff and thirsty, but she couldn't stop thinking that none of this would have happened if she'd checked back with Robin just a little bit earlier after they'd walked the kids up to the encampment.

"You're wrong," the sorcerer mumbled off-handedly in answer to something she hadn't said out loud. "It would have happened anyway," he continued, not looking at her, but bending over her notes instead. "Things will happen while they can, especially when there's ill will involved." His eyes wandered across the parchment, taking in what she'd penned about a legend from the origins of an ancient fairy tribe that had founded a civilization in this world many thousands of years ago.

"_Someone_ knew what you were doing here; _someone_ knew about this room and they were just waiting for a chance to grab that book," he stated flatly, "Roland was here at the wrong moment."

She spun around, scowling at him. "_Do_ you mind?"

"I beg your pardon?"

When the furrows on her brow deepened and her eyes narrowed even further, he apologetically lifted his palms from her desk and held them up defensively as he backed off at the look she was shooting him. He nearly tripped on the tiger tabby that had been preening herself behind him, and sent the terrified cat flying towards the wardrobe, afraid for the last of her remaining lives.

"No, I don't mean that," she corrected him, indifferently waving at the parchment on the table, "just stay out of my head, mister. That's _disturbing, _bordering on_ creepy_."

Rumples mouth flew open in played exasperation. He covered his heart dramatically with splaying fingers and inclined his head. "Nasty habits, dearie!" he declared, a wicked grin pulling at the corners of his mouth – _disturbing_ and _creepy_ was what he was good at – it commanded respect. Well, _mostly_. From _most_ people. When Mrs. Winslett's demeanor didn't change, he quickly wiped that smirk off his face and promised, "Alright, I hereby solemnly pledge that I will never again go prying in your mind."

"That's better," she returned, still glaring at him and shaking a finger in his direction as she came back around the desk and opened a green leather volume at one of the markers she'd set a few hours before. She turned the book so he could see.

"That someone may have been _Jareth_," she told him, pointing to a picture of a goblin king who had been rumored to have ruled many centuries over a kingdom _between _realms. His spikey blond hair and rectangular, blue sparkling eyes with a promise of trouble, straight long nose and slender figure enveloped in iridescent black satin robes seemed vaguely familiar to him, as she turned the page, revealing another drawing of the monarch, this time holding a mirrored sphere reflecting a palace seemingly made of blue light. "He'd be very interested in that book, I'd say," Mrs. Winslett resumed excitedly, "I didn't even know he really existed, but apparently…"

"He _did_, _does_, and _can_ shape-shift into an owl," the sorcerer cut in, earning another pointed look accompanied by an audible huff. "Sorry," he apologized again, straining a smile while closing his eyes and etching sternly into his head never again to interrupt this woman when she was on a roll. "Continue."

"That's about it," she admitted. "Doesn't explain how he got in, though. The castle was protected all the time, and he's not _that_ powerful, is he?"

Rumple chewed on his upper lip, leafing back to the first ink drawing. "No," he finally confessed, committing the semblance of Jareth's humanoid figure to his memory. "But I lifted the protection spell to let the dragon on the grounds the night… the night my wife died."

Lost in that thought, neither of them had heard Henry stir and rise, and they only realized that he was standing next to them when he pulled down a corner of the book so he could better see. "I know that man," he said sleepily, wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. "He was here all week. He did tricks and made everybody laugh."

"Oh, my!" the teacher exclaimed, absently handing him a handkerchief after she'd habitually almost wiped his nose with it. "He _must have_ known about the book, and he _was_ watching us. He only had to wait it out until yesterday, when everybody was down by the meadow."

"Everybody except for Roland," Henry surmised, "because Roland came up early, before anyone else did,"

Rumple took the book from the teacher's hands and flipped back to the page that depicted the reflecting orb. He leaned in closer to the lantern, and squinted at the image, because it, too, seemed to stir something in his memory.

XXXxxxXXX

The barn owl glided waveringly towards the wide rocky riverbank as day began to dawn, debating on where exactly to set down its prize. The bird's black talons were firmly closed around the body of a tiny dormouse, encaging it so it wouldn't fall. Flapping its wings one last time before descending, it dipped its head and angled feathered legs stiffly upwards towards its mask-like face, gingerly tweaking the soft hazel-colored fur of the small mammal at its mercy in gathering it into its bill.

Touching the ground with his feet returned the Goblin King to his human form instantly, and he spat out the dormouse, watching it morph back into the boy that had so adamantly clasped the book he'd been searching for to his belly. The lad had refused to give it up, and rather than harm him, Jareth had grabbed him along with the leather bound volume when they'd heard voices and footsteps on the creaky floor outside the Chronicler's room. The narrow window had opened before him seemingly by itself, and shut behind them in the same manner after he'd shifted and arduously changed Roland using a restricted amount of borrowed magic. _Borrowed_, because it had been intended solely for the purpose of disguising the book; _restricted_, because it was used up now. He'd swooped towards the tower, made sure his passenger was snugly positioned, and started his journey from there. No going back, and why should he? He had nothing to lose and everything to gain. A barn owl he'd been for _so long_ at Ernmas' call, with no means of changing back until Morrigan had found him, and he was certainly not going to repay the debt or miss his chance to return to his realm by failing her.

"Sit," Jareth commanded the five-year-old, who was still hanging on to that book as though his life depended on it. "I could just take it away from you, you know," he told him with menace in his deep, expressive voice, circling him, one arm folded across his chest, the long fingers of the other hand stroking his lips absently in contemplating the situation.

The boy wrapped his arms even more fiercely around the leather volume, but dropped himself to the ground on his behind, eyes wide and heart racing, though he was bone weary. He didn't know what to do, and he knew he was nowhere near home anymore. He'd promised the sorcerer's grandson not to touch the fairy tale book without asking him, but he'd gone back on that, and now he was in trouble. _So_ badly wanting to find out how the story he'd been reading with Henry would end, he'd come to Mrs. Winslett's room alone to forget the grief that rested upon all of the grown-ups out on the meadow like a smothering blanket of sorrow. The door opened just after he'd sat down at the desk.

Roland knew that Jareth had no business being there, so he asked him why he'd come. Jareth was no stranger; he knew him from the castle grounds. The slim, delicate man had simply appeared the morning after Belle had gone, and nobody had questioned this – everyone had been too busy with themselves. He'd seen him around the kitchens a lot, and even inside the Great Hall, and since this hadn't seemed to unsettle anyone, he had accepted it. He'd never been frightened of Jareth before, but he was scaring him _now_.

Smiling benevolently, the Goblin King bent down to the boy and produced a small, colorful crystal orb, seemingly from behind Roland's ear. It rotated within itself smoothly and evenly on the palm of his hand, generating blazing blues and yellows, creating greens and suggesting fiery reds from its center outwards. Jareth held it out to the lad suggestively. "Swap?"

When the exhausted boy didn't respond and flung himself over on his side in resignation, facing away from his abductor, the Goblin King sighed and left him alone. No need to upset the child just yet, he decided, and set about collecting some firewood. It was cold, and they both needed to warm up and rest before starting off on the last leg of their journey, which they'd be tackling on foot.

Presently, he was laboriously stoking some hopeless embers beneath a pile of damp branches with a stick long. His reddened eyes stung, complaining from the smoke, and he cursed and swore at the fumes he was creating with a broad variety of challenging words. Though the affected drawl spilling from his mouth was, in fact, in English, the Goblin King's language was so far beyond Roland, that the boy had no idea what he was prattling on about.

The lad's curiosity was provoked by the smoldering stench and the quality of his companion's soliloquy, so turned about to sit up. After a while, he skidded over to the sinisterly mumbling man, deciding to place the precious volume underneath his behind in distrust, just in case. He sat there with him for a moment, a tenuous grin slowly spreading from his mouth to his eyes, before he took another stick from the pile Jareth had collected, and started to pull apart the dying heap of blackened branches. Jareth eyed him with some interest, as he began layering smaller twigs on the glowing ashes that remained at the bottom of the small pit. Now that there was air and a more suited kindling, the tender flicker of heat soon turned into a cautious flame. Prodding and blowing on it gingerly, Roland watched as the fire grew, crackling merrily and warming them before long.

Jareth frowned when he discovered that he felt slightly piqued; he was astounded by the fact that he'd just been outdone by a five-year-old. Yet, since the number of fires he himself had been compelled to light in his life was negligible, he quickly tucked away his injured pride under one of the layers of his colorful personality. Children were indeed what every grown-up should really like to be, he realized: open hearted and hopeful even at the worst of times – and full of surprises. He'd never had one of his own, and the charm of this boy's company was certainly growing on him. Perhaps he'd have to consider keeping the lad.

XXXxxxXXX

The door of the pawn shop had been forced, and the lock was broken. A wonder that it still closed at all, Belle thought, as she pushed it open just wide enough to slip inside. She didn't turn on the lights, not wanting to draw attention to the premises. Locking up after herself with the key she still had in her pocket, she looked about, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom.

Nothing was in any way as it had been when she'd left it before the second curse, and it quickly dawned on her just why Red had asked her not to come here alone.

The place had been thoroughly turned upside down and its merchandise utterly _trashed_. Not one of the glass vitrines or counter tops had survived the destructive hurricane that the Dark Fairy had unleashed in looking for anything useful among Rumpelstiltskin's possessions and charges. Every last object that had been carefully stored in the open displays, polished cherry tree shelves and mahogany cabinets, or suspended from ceiling and wall fixtures lay in shambles amid the shards on the floor. Even the Mickey Mouse telephone was in pieces.

She stood in the middle of what was left of Gabriel Gold's business for a while, and their parting words in the room where he'd been trying to contain Pan in the end came floating back across time and made her being here so much more difficult than she'd anticipated. Fetching a role of black garbage bags from the closet next to the enamel wash basin by the rear entrance was a challenge in and on itself, since bigger items of furniture had been knocked over everywhere, blocking the floor and the curtained doorway to the back room. She took note that it was even worse in there than out front as she began unraveling the role and tearing off several of the sturdy bin liners.

Whale had pointed out that there was actually no need for her to do any of this; she could very well just bring whatever she thought necessary to work on over to Gold's house, but it didn't seem right to leave things as they were. Not here, where everything had always had its place – even if Rumple would never know and never return. And not that she was optimistic about finding much of anything in this mess, either. Right now, she felt that she had to busy her hands, and not just her mind. Putting this right was somehow both important and therapeutic, so she chose to ignore Whale's advice, yet again, and get to it.

The salmon colored house on Pine Street had been in a much similar state as the shop, and it had taken her and Ruby the better part of a week to sort it out and make it habitable again. She'd opted to move in, since this would have been her home, and it was much more comfortable than her apartment above the library. It had a bathtub, and there was a complete working kitchen, in contrast to the microwave and the hotplate she'd been using at her place. There was even a garden she liked to think she'd start tending to, if things were ever to resemble normality again in any way. Above all though, it had his room – their room. Every night when she went to bed and snuggled in, pulling the covers up over her shoulders and feeling the coolness of his soft pillow on her cheeks, she imagined that he was there beside her. She would talk to him in her sleep, and he would answer, but in the morning, she could never quite remember what he'd said.

Clearing away the furniture and carrying out the staggering amount of bags that were quickly filling in the course of the afternoon would require her to get some help from the guys, Belle decided, when she tried to lift one. She'd have to speak to them about that tonight; they'd all been meeting randomly at different people's houses in the past days, since coming to Granny's seemed a bit risky for her, given the circumstances of her return and the miners' daytime obligations to Ernmas.

XXXxxxXXX

"Do you know what this is?" the sorcerer inquired, referring to the palace that was reflected on the mirroring orb in the Goblin King's hand. Mrs. Winslett leaned in to get a closer look, wishing for the umpteenth time that her glasses hadn't stayed sitting on the Sofa next to the Bronte novel she'd been reading in her living room when the purple mist had taken them all away from Storybrooke. There were a lot of palaces and castles mentioned in fairy lore, but she hadn't come across one quite like this, she decided, squinting at the picture. She was at a loss.

"That," began Henry, excitedly searching through one of the books he'd been skimming, "would be the Ice Palace!" Having found the story that Andresen's Snow Queen was based upon, he showed them a likeness of the palace as it had really been built by the ancient fairy folk in a hidden corner of their world. It was built upon a mountain of glass, the heart and soul of a magnificent citadel to which only the old families were granted admission.

"The women who raised me told me about this place, when I was a boy" Rumple recalled, thinking back to a time when he'd been safe inside himself before going to sleep – wonderful sleep – at night. He was protected by the spinsters' spells that made him forget who he was and where he'd come from, that his father had left him, and that he'd never known his mother. There was peace in the old tales they had told, and beauty and wisdom. The Ice Palace was a magical realm in itself, so they had a lot to read up on.

XXXxxxXXX

Belle realized her mistake when it was too late. She'd managed to barricade herself in: the rear wall, and with it the door, was cluttered with broken furniture and chairs, and the curtained entrance to the shop was jammed up with the black plastic bags she'd been packing. She considered the weights she'd have to lift to free herself, and sighed. No way, she thought. Closing her eyes, she pictured the heavy garbage bags shifting on their own, and the grandfather clock that lay askew and blocking the entrance lifting itself up off the littered floor. In her mind, it found back to its place in between where the cuckoo clock had hung before it had been pitched halfway across the shop, and the framed imitation of Duerer's rabbit, if it _was_ in fact an imitation. No telling anymore, since it was in shreds. She waited for that familiar tingle on the back of her neck. It didn't come, and when she looked up, the bags were still there.

XXXxxxXXX

"It's late," Rumple said softly, ruffling the boy's hair. "Let's get you to bed, Henry."

The sorcerer thought that he'd be returning here after he'd seen his grandson to his room. Just for another hour or so, until he'd be sure that sleep would find him. It did, sometimes, and when it did, he dreamed of Belle. She was lying next to him, and he could smell her scent on the sheets and pillows. He would talk to her, and she would answer him, but in the morning, he could never quite recall what she'd said.

The boy followed him out through the wardrobe reluctantly, casting a glance back at Mrs. Winslett, who was tidying the books up off the floor. "See you tomorrow?" he asked uncertainly.

She rolled her eyes and nodded, gesticulating at him to leave already. "Good night, Henry" she told him firmly. "Go on, then!""

He smiled and tucked his in chin, hurrying after his grandfather. He caught up with him at the foot of the narrow staircase leading to the third floor corridor and gently put his hand on the sorcerer's arm, holding him back.

"You promised me something," he reminded Rumpelstiltskin.

"This isn't the time, my boy. It's late, and we're both tired…"

"I know, but you promised. _One_ every day."

The sorcerer nodded resignedly, seated himself on the bottom step and patted the wooden tread to his right in motioning Henry to join him. The boy sat, and Rumple held out both his hands, clenched to fists in front of him, his fingers closed downwards.

"Concentrate," he told the boy. "It's not hard. Which hand is holding the pebble?"

Henry's eyes narrowed, and his jaw set. He tried to see beyond the flesh and bone at first, but when he found that he wasn't getting anywhere, he snuck a sideward glance at his grandfather's blank and deliberately guarded face. He smiled, having instantly found his answer.

XXXxxxXXX

Belle sighed and started dragging the first of the bags away. Then, the magic began working: one after the other, the sacks began moving on their own. They parted far enough to let her pass through and out into the show. As she did so, the grandfather clock returned to its place, followed by the cuckoo clock and the Duerer painting, which looked as though it had just been completed by the old master himself only yesterday. The tingling sensation was back, and it felt more than good.

XXXxxxXXX

Henry's smile widened into a grin. "The right one. But it's not a pebble. It's a ring."

The sorcerer opened his fist to reveal Belle's wedding ring. He'd been carrying it around in his pocket since Snow had returned it to him. She'd found it on the mantelpiece in the Great Hall. He stared at it for a moment, reliving his agony as he did so often when he held at it, and decided that hiding things in plain sight made them lose their fright. Warming it intensely without feeling the heat, he widened it to fit his finger above his own golden band and slipped it on.

"Well done," he told the boy quietly. "How did you go about it?"

"I looked into your mind. It wasn't hard; I saw how you did that with Mrs. Winslett tonight," Henry replied, staggering the sorcerer. He hadn't been aware of the boy's intrusion in the least, even though he'd made sure he was well shielded. _This_, he had not expected _at all_.

**OOOoooOOO**

**Thank you for feedback and reviewing: ****cynicsquest, ****Grace52311973, ****Twyla Mercedes and CJ Moliere. Thanks also to the people who favorited and are following - don't be shy, I'm always glad to hear what you think.**

**Next: Rumple has a proposition for Emma, and Belle makes a discovery**


	3. Here, Where I Am

3. Here, Where I Am

Red carried the wicker basket down the old mining tunnel ahead of her with some difficulty, using both hands. She came here every day, and it was always heavy. She didn't believe in letting people go hungry, even if some of them scared the living daylights out of her – not to mention that Ernmas was holding Tink hostage in this dank, burrow-like hole in the ground.

About one in two of the sparse industrial safety lamps fixed to the ceiling was flickering, but most of them were working nonetheless, and she could see where she was going. The intense glow that emanated from the portal itself was nearly bright enough to illuminate the last portion of the dead-end passage it was located in. She set the loaded basket down on the gravel beside the rusty old tram tracks when she'd reached the cavern that was only slightly wider than the rest of the shaft that led here. The unpleasant murmur in the pit of her stomach was hard to ignore, but she was getting better at it each time she felt it.

Kneading life back into her numb fingers, she cleared her throat and announced herself, assuming that the Fairy Queen would know she was here anyway. "Room service," she called, her voice laced with apprehension despite herself.

"About time, too," Jones replied, slowly sauntering out of the shadows as far as he could within the limitations of his prison cell, his thumb latched in the waistband of his pants. His confinement comprised of a small, gloomy notch that was closed off from the rest of the tunnel by a spell that defined the radius within which he was permitted to move about. It wasn't very big, as he was yet again reminded by the sharp pain in his head that flared up when he'd reached the periphery of his personal space, about five paces from were Red was standing.

"Have you brought what I asked you for, love?" he asked sheepishly, raking his hand through his oily hair, hook waving lightly through the air ahead of him. He had little hope, but you couldn't blame a man for trying.

He looked grubbier from one day to the next, Red thought, considering his appearance for a moment. He'd been down here so long now that it was no wonder; she almost felt sorry for him, though she'd never liked him much.

Killian Jones had spent the first days of his captivity a trembling, aggravated mess gone cold turkey, and he'd followed up on that stage by ranting, swearing and throwing things around until Ernmas had lost patience and put a muzzle on him with a muting spell for a while. That couldn't have been easy on him, but all things considered, Red had to admit that he seemed to be holding up quite well since.

He lowered his head to give her the crooked, pleading look of a child asking for seconds of ice cream as he repeated his question when she just raised an eyebrow at him.

"Cut it out," she stated dryly. "You're not getting anything to drink from me."

"You're killing me, you know that, Lucas?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Jones," she sighed. "You _are_ over the worst of it, you know."

She retrieved a fresh towel and a small sample dispenser of liquid soap from the basket and threw both things at him. "Go and wash yourself," she told him. "You have water back there, but, Jeez, you smell a mile against the wind, buddy."

She faced away from him and her gaze wandered about in search of Tink. His eyes burned into her back, a smile faltering on his lips as he watched her. There was nothing she could do about that, she decided, and she was above letting it irritate her. Hook irritated everyone, it seemed, except for Tink, who was only down here because she'd refused to leave him behind.

Ernmas had given Tink more freedom to move about than Hook could claim, so the blonde fairy wasn't necessarily always around when Red came to bring food. She sometimes wandered off by herself for as far as her restraints would allow. The Fairy Queen really only needed Tink with her when she wanted her to enforce the different spells and potions she was trying on the wards that protected its exit, and she'd tied the younger fairy to herself by a proximity enchantment that included most parts of the mining shafts right over to where the dwarves were working. Jones was here as a precaution, so Tink wouldn't get ideas about sabotaging anything the Fairy Queen was doing to get back to the Enchanted World. Ernmas knew that Tink wouldn't risk the human that she obviously cared about being cursed or obliterated for anything she did or refused to do, so she was sure the younger fairy would remain compliant.

The dwarves were also free to move about, but they spent their days in a different part of the mines, hammering their way deep into the rock in search of another vein of the precious, and, in this world rather rare ore they could turn into fairy dust with their pick axes. Ernmas had made it very clear to them that Tinkerbell's well-being depended on the success of their assignment.

The Queen was in desperate need of fairy dust because her abilities were limited without it, and she was reduced to cooking up potions and enchantments the way she'd done before in her human form as Mother Superior just after the first curse had been lifted. The supply she'd taken from Tink when she'd caught up with them in the portal hadn't lasted long, and there was nothing left of it at all now.

The only way she'd been able to fully heal herself from the wound Red's wolf had infected her with, was by resorting to a magical remedy against bites from were-creatures that she'd cooked up at the pawn shop using Rumpelstiltskin's journals and stores of ingredients. She'd used a variation of the same mixture to downgrade Red's capacity to shift to her wolf-form at will so that this wouldn't happen again, and there wasn't a thing Red could do to help any of them against Ernmas now. Nothing, but bring food for Tink and the useless pirate everyone but Tink was blaming for the mess they were in.

"You know what I don't get, love?" Hook queried.

There was probably a lot this one didn't get, but she was going to give him the treat of biting. "Enlighten me," she sighed, not bothering to turn around.

"Why the hell are you still here?"

She'd have to lie if she was going to answer that one, she decided, or at least ignore him.

Whale and Red had been told they were at liberty to cross the town line and never come back, and they almost had. But they hadn't tried to leave Storybrooke again since Belle had arrived, because they both knew that Belle would never consider going with them, as things were. Red didn't want to force the issue or abandon her as long as she still had any kind of hope that she'd find a way to return to the Enchanted World with the magic that this place still had to offer. It wasn't hard to see that Belle was sick with worry because she didn't know what had happened to Rumple or the rest of her people since she'd returned to this world. Red found she could relate to that in her own way.

There was something off about Belle's story, though, and it occupied Red's mind even now, as she cautiously approached the portal, away from Hook and opting to ignore his question.

Belle refused to tell them _exactly_ how she'd wound up back in Storybrooke. Red assumed that it had something to do with the green-faced witch they'd encountered shortly before she herself had left the Enchanted World with Bae and Rumpelstiltskin through the portal when it had still been working. Belle had merely told them that Ernmas wasn't the only one who was after Henry and the book, and she was very worried that none of them would be safe in either world if Rumple couldn't protect him on his own. Belle had definitely _not_ used the gateway Red was looking at to cross realms, and she most certainly wasn't here because she'd chosen to be. As a matter of fact, going by the state she'd been in when they'd found her on the road near the clock tower, Red knew that something quite awful must have happened to her. Whenever Red tried to get her to talk about it though, she tended to shut down very firmly, and that was usually the end of their conversation.

Ernmas didn't know that Belle was back, and they'd thought it wise to keep it that way. Between them, Red, Whale and the dwarves had agreed never to mention Belle to Tink or Hook. It was too dangerous, since Belle was trying to find out how to get Tink and the dwarves out of the mess they were in, and it was unlikely that her majesty would be too happy about that. Red got the feeling that Ernmas' wanting to get back to the Enchanted World and the events that had led Belle to Storybrooke were somehow linked, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She hoped that Belle would clear that up sometime sooner rather than later. It was unnerving only to have half the pieces of this puzzle.

"In case you're wondering, they've been in there since yesterday," Hook told her. "They went in just after you left."

"Since _yesterday_?" Red repeated in alarm, glaring at the portal as though she could make out what was going on beyond the rippling surface of pure light and energy trapped within what looked and felt like sheet ice, and he shrugged.

She couldn't for the life of her imagine how the two fairies were able to stay inside the whirring radiance and static that filled the intermediate space between entrance and exit of the portal for any length of time, never mind a _whole day_. She'd felt extremely nauseated and faint both times that she'd just passed through – or _almost_ passed through the second time. Though she'd been listening very closely to Belle these last days, when her friend had been filling them in on what she'd found out about fairies and their perceptions of space and time, this still seemed very long to her. Unless, of course, they'd made it through to the other side.

"Don't worry," Hook began, "they _are_ still inside. If they weren't, I'd be free…" he made a little fluttering motion with his hand, "as a bird."

"And back down to the Rabbit Hole, I'll bet," Red grinned.

His own dark smile widened. "Where else, love? Away to New York?"

Crouching down, Red finally began unpacking the things she'd brought: there were sandwiches, packaged cookies, some fresh fruit and cans of vegetable soup, bottled water and a canister of juice. She took her time in setting everything out on a crate that served as a tabletop, because she really still hoped to catch Tink, just to make sure that she was alright. There was nothing she could do about that either way, but she wanted to know; none of them trusted Ernmas. Red had seen what the creature they'd all so wrongly perceived as everyone's good fairy was capable of at Regina's mausoleum.

When there was still no sign of Tink after some length of time, she gathered up the empty cartons and packaging that were lying around on the dusty rock floor beside the crate into her basket to take back with her. Then, she rose to her feet in one supple movement and absently brushed her hands across the thighs of her jeans to get rid of dirt and crumbs, not realizing that she wasn't wearing her apron. She took a few meandering steps towards Jones, who'd seemed content enough watching her all the while she'd been here, and tried to think of a harmless topic of conversation that would fill the remaining minutes of their time.

She couldn't, so she left.

XXXxxxXXX

"Hey, guys," Belle called, entering the kitchen through the back door. She was weighed down with books, as usual, and looking slightly drained when she put them down on the counter beside the fridge. "Oh, this smells good," she mumbled, taking in the smell of cooking food.

Red had been here a while before the others, having come straight in from her run to the mines with only a short stop at the diner to pick up the food she'd prepared there earlier. She'd just taken a deep baking tray of potato gratin with broccoli out of the oven to set on the large dining table, placing some round, plate-sized cork mats underneath to protect the wood surface. The owners of this house might never return to it, but if they did, they would find everything as good as they'd left it. Red wasn't unlike her grandmother in many respects, Belle thought, breathing in the delicious, spicy aroma of the meatloaf her friend had brought from Granny's and heated in the microwave. Jeffrey was whisking up some chemically flavored desert-cream or other with a mixer over the sink, but she knew to avoid those later. Her stomach had been having trouble with sugary things for weeks.

"Anything I can do to help?" she asked, looking over her friend's shoulder as she started slicing the meat.

"Nope," Red smiled warmly at her. "Nearly done, here. But Victor will want to see you before we eat."

Belle pulled a face at her, but obediently padded off towards the living room, where the doctor was playing a Wii game with three of the miners, slipping into the roles of an ogre and his unlikely friends crashing through Fairy Tale Land and trying to defeat Rumpelstiltskin. She took a seat on the couch beside Leroy, who was playing Donkey and waited for them to finish the level they were on. She couldn't help but smile at the contrary nature of their mission. Whale was first to cross the line, having given the maniacally giggling red-haired creature on the screen a good run for his money. She took that to mean he'd won, and he actually jumped up and did a little dance when the baddie disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, gloating over his triumph like he'd rid the Enchanted Forest of an entire plague of villains. Then, he realized she was there.

He always seemed a bit edgy around her; Belle attributed that to her relationship with Rumpelstiltskin. It made a lot of people uneasy, even when they personally knew her; the shadow that was cast by her husband's reputation was enormous and intimidating. She was also aware of the fact that the doctor would rather not be here at all. Red was the only reason he was staying, and Red was only staying because of her. This, in turn, made Belle feel awkward whenever she was around Victor.

She and Red had talked a lot about Granny and Snow, and about David's dreams for the future in the other world, but it seemed to Belle that Red's mind was made up. If and when Belle found a way to get through to Rumple and leave this place, Red was prepared to let go of everything she knew and set out across the town line with Whale to make a new life for herself somewhere in this world. She wasn't afraid of losing her memories, which the Fairy Queen had told her was the price she'd have to pay, and it didn't worry her to think of how she'd make a living. Red was convinced that she wasn't giving up anything, and she was equally convinced that she had a good thing going with Whale, which she didn't want to risk putting on the line. There wasn't a doubt in Belle's mind that her friend would make a go of it; it was Victor she was more worried about. She wasn't sure that he would do all that well out there – if he'd really been comfortable outside this bubble called Storybrooke that he'd spent half of his life living rather well inside of, then he wouldn't have kept coming back here after he'd left, that much was for sure. Deep down, he was restless and insecure. With or without Red, and with or without his memories, that was unlikely to change very quickly. Belle didn't want to see Red hurt, but she was hardly the right person to give her friend a lecture on her choice of man or how she wanted to live her life, so she could only hope that things would turn out well, despite everything.

The others were already heading towards the kitchen when Whale swiftly whipped out his hemodynamometer and checked her blood pressure. He questioned her about her weight, shot her a look of dissatisfaction, and inquired whether or not she was taking her medication regularly. Seeming to relax just a little when she reassured him that she was, and that all was well, as far as she was concerned, they followed the other to the kitchen to have their meal. Belle genuinely looked forward to their get-together every night.

The miners were always a noisy crowd at dinner; they had a lot to talk about in general, for all the time they spent in a dark pit underground. She loved to listen to their stories and the loveable way they would mock a squabble. They were unique in their humor, but also in their honesty with one another. Being the best of buddies, none of them would ever intentionally hurt another member of their unique little group. That made them so different from a lot of the humans she'd gotten to know in her life; humans were in the habit of breaking promises and keeping secrets. She would make sure to keep the promise she'd made to them, though. Belle was beyond grateful that it was _them_ she was here with, even if the circumstances were less than favorable and she'd rather they were safe someplace else. She had no idea what she would have done if she had been sent back here and found herself in the company of Sinbad and the thirteen robbers, or Ella and her Carriage Mice. A tentative smile crept across her face for the first time that evening at the thought of that. Red handed her a plate that seemed positively piled with the wonderful, steaming gratin, and the smile became skeptical.

"So, what have you got for us today?" Leroy asked, ravenously scooping some crumbly mincemeat into his mouth with a badly held fork, while Belle was still contemplating the mere smell of her food, which was by all means tempting, but starting to turn her stomach, as it so often did.

She took a drink of water before answering. "A few more things about the citadel I told you about, the one that's supposed to have been the center of power for the original fairy community."

Whale impaled a small broccoli floret and dunked it back into the béchamel sauce on his plate a few times. "Did you find out what happened to them in the end, by the way?" he asked, leisurely popping it in his mouth.

"Hmm," Belle nodded, as she unhurriedly chewed and swallowed some of her potato, hoping she was going to keep this down. Some days were better than others, and she hoped that this would turn out to be one of the good ones.

"I found a lot on that, actually," she told them. "I realized today that I've been searching in all the wrong places." She took another drink of water to wash down a mouthful of mince. "I haven't been able get the backstory on this up to now because the titles on most of the book covers at Rumple's shop don't correspond with their content, so I actually have to leaf through them _all_ one at a time to find out what I'm looking at."

"Well, now, that doesn't surprise me, sister," Leroy commented, "no offence, but your boyfriend is a shifty mystery-monger even in death."

Belle shot him an indignant look and poked around in her food some more for another thin slice of potato. She wasn't very fond of broccoli even when she wasn't pregnant. "He's not dead," she reminded him in clipped tones, stabbing at the piece of spud she'd found.

"Leroy knows that," Red cut in before he could say anything else, and aimed a kick at the miner's shin under the table. "We all do."

"What?" Leroy drawled on nonetheless, "This _is_ Rumpelstiltskin we're talking about." That earned him another bruise on the leg, and he ultimately decided to put a sock in it.

Jeffrey offered Belle some more water from the pitcher when the color of her face came to his attention, and she gladly accepted.

"Two of the most influential opposing clans were at each other's throats, apparently," she went on after a moment, but then hesitated.

_Fairies? At each other's throats?_ That didn't seem very fairy-like, not in the sense that she, or people in general, probably always imagined the reputedly kind and delicate creatures to be. But then again, she didn't know very many fairies personally, and she hadn't been around to see any of what was described within the chronologies she was ploughing her way through. She just had the feeling they were all suffering the reverberations of those occurrences.

"Well, the book I found on this legend in particular doesn't _quite_ put it that way," she reconsidered her phrasing, "but, you know, the accounts of what apparently happened back then read much like the holiday edition of some newsmagazine today, if you boil it down to the essentials: bribery, lobbyism, scheming and unexplained disappearances. And all of this finally led to a war that evidently cost many lives. Many of the original families were actually completely wiped out."

Doc snorted, as he refused another helping of gratin from Red. He put his cutlery down neatly across his clean plate and dabbed at his lips with a white paper napkin from the diner. "Sounds more human than fairy, doesn't it?"

Belle shrugged and put her own fork down. She rested her right arm in front of herself on the table and pushed her plate a little way towards the center of the table in a way that made Red realize that she wasn't going to finish her meal.

"I guess that a lot of power can corrupt even fairies," she surmised, chewing her lower lip and choosing not to respond to Red's glare. "In the end, the clan that would have nominated the next Fairy Queen after the hundred-year reign of her predecessor was over, cast two different curses: One on what's specifically referred to as '_The Rift_ in the heart of the Ice Palace', and another one on the citadel that was constructed and built around it by masters of the guild to protect what's inside."

"Interesting," said Tom, who'd stuck to the meatloaf and was taking another portion, since he was allergic to broccoli and dared not touch the hot dish. "I've never heard of this citadel. You'd think we would have."

"I haven't, either, and I've been reading this kind of thing all my life," Belle admitted, "I've got a hunch though: Maybe the writings were concealed before, somehow, just as the citadel was. Perhaps the curse that was cast on it affected everything that had to do with it." She shifted in her seat somewhat to be more comfortable. "I do believe that it's real, though, and I know that it's important." She picked up her glass and absently swayed the water at the very bottom around inside it, watching it gently slosh up and down the sides. "The legend says that the fairies were banished from it to wake them up to what they'd done. It was hidden from sight to any living creature for a predetermined time of five thousand years. Quite a simple spell, really," she mused, thinking of the cloaking spell Rumple was using to keep magical beings from the castle. "It's written that after this time, the fairies or their ancestors were to return and elect a new Queen."

"So… why would any of this would be important to _us_?" asked Jeffrey, rolling the handle of his knife between his fingers.

"Well, apart from the fact that you're not very keen on living out your days in those mines – neither here nor there – think about this: I've done some calculations, and I can put pretty accurate dates to the time-line that's mentioned," Belle told him, putting down her glass. "I'd say those five millennia are up, and I wonder who all's up for election."

XXXxxxXXX

Turning on her shower some time later, Belle marveled at how quickly you could get reacquainted with the pleasantness of warm running water. This was the one thing she loved about Storybrooke, even if there was a lot _not_ to love about this little ghost town at present.

She stripped off and stepped into the jet, relishing the balminess and gentle pressure of it on the skin of her shoulders and chest for a while without thinking of anything in particular. It was her one true luxury at the end of each day, and she utterly enjoyed her wonderful soak, soaping down with her favorite kind of rose-scented shower mouse before she closed her eyes and immersed her chestnut brown hair, tilting her head this way and that and carding it back from her face every now and then. She squeezed some of the fragrant two-in-one shampoo from the bottle and took her time in dispensing it. Shifting about to face away from the shower head when she was done, she rinsed off the foam thoroughly and then added more hot water to the mixture, letting it run over her neck and back. Her hands lingered contentedly on the baby bump that was very slightly protruding now, making her look more as though she'd just put on some weight rather than being expectant, before her eyes wandered upwards on the half rounded glass doors of the quarter circle cubicle, briefly searching the misted surface. They caught on the clear handprint near the top that appeared whenever the glass had fogged up – Rumple's handprint. Seeing it there was the main part of this evening ritual, and she always tried to make it last.

After shutting off the single-lever fitting, she twisted her hair firmly at the back to press some of the water out of it. She pushed open the door and trod on the mat that covered the tiles right at the foot of the shower tray. Her feet sank into the soft pile, and she cautiously leaned over to retrieve the fresh towels she'd put over the back of a chair. Breathing in the scent of them was a coming home in itself, as she wrapped the larger of the two snugly around herself, while the smaller one served to envelope her dripping locks. She laundered them with Rumple's brand of detergent still. He'd always smelled faintly of it, so this, too, was a part of the ritual that she cherished.

Belle closed the heavy blinds firmly before she switched on the lamp on her nightstand. She'd checked to see if they closed well enough so you wouldn't see light from out on the street when she'd moved in, and she'd been satisfied. Plunking down on the bed, she briefly considered swapping her towel for a bathrobe, but it was a warm full moon night, and she was impatient now that she saw the sand dollar and the two books that were lying on the covers before her. She'd brought the books upstairs despite herself, since she hadn't planned on taking anything to work on to this room with her. She was so often tired, and Whale was always on her case about getting enough sleep. The baby needed her to rest, and this was the one place she hadn't yet desecrated with the things she'd been bringing to the house when she hadn't progressed as she'd hoped at the shop or at the library before meeting the miners and Red after sundown.

The sand dollar Rumple had sent Ariel from Neverland to give to her what seemed like ages ago had turned up underneath one of the display counters; she'd found it by chance when she bent down to pick up a book that had slipped from her hands in fumbling with the key, just as she'd been heading off to the meeting with Red and the guys. She knew what was recorded on it, and she decided to save it for last. It might help her sleep.

The books had been two more of many interesting ones amongst the heaps and piles of volumes she'd been sighting in the pawn shop during the past week. Ernmas had probably taken most of the seemingly worthwhile ones to the mines with her, but Belle had an eye for special things, and she knew to sift the chaff from the wheat where original works of reference was concerned.

The tomes sitting on her bed weren't much to look at in their simple fabric-coated hard back issues. Judging by what was really inside the cheap cardboard, however, Belle thought that they were most certainly more valuable than they appeared to be at first glance. They'd obviously been amateurishly restored sometime in the late seventies or early eighties; the pages looked as though they'd been recut to fit the slimmer, more practical coverings they were currently imprisoned within. It would have made more sense to her to have made the binding large enough to accommodate the original size of the sheaf. There was next to no margin between the print and the edge of the paper on one of them, and some of the lithographs had been severely cropped. She wondered what kind of a bookbinder would have done such a dilettantish job on the beautiful old transcriptions her methodical skimming had uncovered. But then: maybe they'd not been meant to seem very old or very significant.

Belle gave her hair a final going over and discarded the damp towel absently on the floor, quickly raking her fingers through the worst of the tangles. She pulled her legs up and rolled over on her side, leafing through the thicker of both volumes. It was a collection of writings from the hand of several authors. There was no listing of content, and some of the texts were in a language she didn't understand, while others were in one that she did. She really needed an operational internet connection back, she decided, but since that wasn't going to happen any time soon, she randomly chose a place to begin and started reading one of the passages that was in English.

The essay was hard to follow, since there was hardly any punctuation, and there were no passage-breaks, but she managed to get through the whole of it by the time her eyes were starting to bother her. It was a thesis on the possibility of traveling between realms, and the author was someone she knew: Jefferson Chapeau.

**OOOoooOOO**

** Thanks to everyone who reviewed, has favorited and is following!**

**Special thanks to cynicsquest for beta-ing, good thoughts and advice.**

**Next: A Moonlight Serenade, Henry oversteps, and Jefferson is back.**


	4. Moonlight Serenade

4. Moonlight Serenade

Jefferson Chapeau and his daughter had joined the colorful trek that was slowly making its way towards the Ice Palace, but he was keeping them to themselves at the back of the group they were traveling with. Trustfulness wasn't the most pronounced of his character traits; not since he'd literally lost his head a while ago by trusting the Evil Queen.

Fairies of every kind and conviction were arriving to these parts from all corners of the Enchanted World, and their numbers were sheer myriad. On one hand, the Hatter felt that he belonged with them, and on the other, he was as lonely as he'd ever been before in his life. A gnawing anxiety chaffed the back of his throat whenever he looked about and saw the steady exodus that was going on around him. Having spent most of his Storybrooke years in a big old house at the edge of the forest, he hadn't really spoken to a great many people in all this time; whether they were human, or fairy or anything in between had not disclosed itself to him then. There had never been a reason for much interaction in the World Without Magic, just as there hadn't been one here before the curse was cast. He'd lost his wife, Madeline, when Grace was still an infant, and the world had simply stopped turning in most respects when he'd realized that he'd inadvertently sent her to a dimension he couldn't follow her to, and from which she wouldn't be able to return on her own. Grace had been his only salvation, and he'd watched her from afar for twenty-eight years, living the life of someone else's daughter on the other end of town. She was here with him now, though, and he would most certainly see to it that her world never stopped spinning, as his hat had, and make sure she got the life she deserved. And: that she got her mother back.

They'd all heard _The Calling_. Even Grace had, which made Jefferson more confident still that what he was doing was right, and for their best. At first, there had merely been rumors that the enchantment was lifted, but it had been only days until every being of fairy ancestry in this dimension had heard the deep, clear toll of the bell at the stronghold's main gates for themselves. It reverberated within the conscious mind as an incessant signal, beckoning them. In olden days, such a bell had been used to mark time in the mornings and before dark. It was there to let the good folk know when the fortress would open and close its entrances, so that anyone who had business there, or was going about their business elsewhere, outside the safety of its walls, would know when to leave or come back. The ancient fairies had all been on the outside of these walls for lifetimes untold, and the human halfbloods _felt_ like they had, too, but the bell was calling them all home now.

Five thousand years had passed since the pure-blooded amongst the fairies that were heading for the citadel had been banished from the center of their civilization. Most of them had tried to return there long before this at least once in all that time. They'd failed, deterred by the spells that the seventeen Gatekeepers had designed for the use of one ancient ruling family to keep away all of their kind from its halls. Five thousand years of exile from the palace and _The Rift_ had been thought time enough to bring about a change in mindset and amity between the clans; an agreeable treaty to lay the foundations for their civilization's common law and order once again.

Highly improbable that this would ever come about, Jefferson thought, grinning sardonically to himself, as he slowed his pace to accommodate for his daughter's weary trudge. The girl wasn't keeping up at all anymore just before they'd almost reached the wide river bank, where Jareth was tending a fire that his five-year-old human companion had lit. The Hatter knew from experience that one drop of blood was enough to turn a whole bucket of water red, just as one moment of darkness was sufficient to blacken the heart of a man, and one blackened heart that had its following was all it took to find the weakness of any society, and deprave and undermine it in an instant. He took Grace's backpack and shouldered it on top of his own, as he contemplated the situation. But perhaps he was being too pessimistic, he scolded himself when he saw her smiling up at him warmly and make a new effort to match his strides. There was so much hope in her eyes that it scared him to death.

The fairies of mixed descent, such as Jefferson was, were still mostly very young in human years, and they'd never seen the citadel or been inside the Ice Palace itself. Some of them hadn't even been aware of its existence up until now, but they were all _compelled_ to heed its summons nonetheless, right along with the old families, or what was left of them. _What an unbalanced assortment_, he realized, but this didn't necessarily mean anything negative for the likes of him, if he played his cards right. He had talents that some of the part-humans didn't.

For instance, Jefferson had known ahead of time when to pack what few belongings he could claim as his own and set out. Another Gatekeeper that he'd become acquainted with had told him he sensed it, too, so the Hatter had started preparing his daughter for the long journey weeks ago by telling her the stories that had been passed on to him by his mother – the stories of her fairy family lineage. His human father had not been very fond of the things she'd been filling his head with from an early age, but, as a boy, he'd always accepted and deeply embraced the truth in them; he'd been born a Gatekeeper, just like she had, and that made him special. Being to the greatest part human though, his mother had died as most humans tended to die in this world: old before her time, and sick with something neither their village healer nor the less talented fairies of their day and age could yet heal.

The dark-haired man with the silken scarf that concealed the hideous scar on his neck had spent his entire life looking for, and, more often than not, _finding_ portals and peddling them to the highest bidder, but he'd never been able to open one into the dimension that could have saved her life with a few simple doses of penicillin. However, if he was accepted within the fairy community with all his human genes, his own child would never share that fate. Jefferson wasn't yet entirely sure that it would be as easy as all that, but he knew it was his destiny, and he was bent on figuring out a way to make this work out for himself and Grace, and he was determined to find the gateway that would lead him to Madeline.

His twelve-year-old girl was asleep on her feet and stumbling more than she was walking, and he realized that he would not be able to carry her, exhausted as he was himself. He decided that it would be wise to make a halt before they crossed the broad, braided river with its turbulent currents. She needed to get some proper, lying-down rest just as badly as the child he happened upon when he approached the solitary man on the fine cobble bank at the fire he would love for them to share. Crouching down beside the blond humanoid, he was about to ask for permission when he realized who he was dealing with. His eyes widened for the space of just one unguarded split second, but it had already registered with Jareth, who was no more than slightly amused by the Hatter's slip.

Jefferson didn't expect the Goblin King to remember him – but he certainly wouldn't forget the night they'd first met. It wasn't long before they'd started to hear _The Calling_. Morrigan had been rumored to be out and about, spreading the sort of disquiet she was renowned for throughout history. The same kind that had gotten them all here, incidentally, when you looked at this from a distance, Jefferson mused, as he held the other man's gaze.

The oldest of Ernmas' three daughters had summoned a select few of the new arrivals from the World Without Magic, as well as some of the more misfortunate, but talented souls that had remained behind after the curse to offer them a lucrative deal. They'd gathered in the Great Hall at the Evil Queen's Palace, and been surprised to find Morrigan had taken on Regina's appearance. The first of the dozen attendants of this quiet meeting to question her motives had been struck down and crushed by a falling pillar. The others had thought it wise to hold their peace from there on in and subsequently only spoke when they'd been directly addressed after that.

The bargain she'd suggested to them without much further ado was an almost impossible proposition that evoked a lot of blank faces and downward stares at the cracked floor tiles, a bit of undiscernible mumbling and some nine or ten pairs of uncomfortably shuffling feet. She offered anyone who would bring her a certain book of fairytales from the Dark Castle and/or the Dark One's grandson a place Inner Circle of the new reign at the Ice Palace, as well as the privilege to travel and cross realms that went along with it.

The Hatter had come to be at this meeting more by chance than by invitation, but he'd always had a knack for being in the right place at the right time to get some insight, at the very least. No way would he have taken up the challenge himself because if there was one thing he knew, it was not to underestimate and mess with the Dark One. They'd all witnessed what he was capable of when it came to his family. Most of the others present there had probably been thinking the same thing, judging by their demeanor.

Jareth, however, had spoken up and outright asked her why she didn't just sort this out on her own, if she was still as powerful as she claimed to be. Jefferson had half expected her to bury him underneath the trembling, crumbling ceiling, but then she'd just smiled coolly and given him another demonstration of her abilities by obliterating several other members of their circle instead. If he'd been impressed by her callous resolve, he'd hidden it well, because he never even flinched when their companions were sucked into the crevices in the floor, skin and bones breaking audibly and sickeningly. Jefferson had almost soiled his underwear at the sound of their screams. Morrigan had gone on to explain that things simply didn't always turn out as they were expected to, and he vaguely remembered her clarifying that she was going to have the book and the boy either way, it was all just a matter of time.

Jefferson and three or four other survivors of Morrigan's little hiring-interview had hurriedly made their exit from the disintegrating ruins of the Evil Palace a short while later, leaving the Goblin King behind to discuss the details of their working-contract. Obviously, they'd come to some sort of amiable agreement, because here he was, in possession of the book. Jefferson acknowledged the familiar leather volume Roland's head was resting on. Timing was _indeed_ everything, the Hatter concluded from that, and this was a really good time for him to get acquainted with the monarch he never would have approached in another life. He had no intention of deeper contemplation on how the Goblin gotten his hands on that book after what he'd heard had been going on at the Dark Castle, or what the slumbering boy he didn't recognize was doing with it tucked under his cheek, but he was sure that he wasn't going to end up on the down-side of life back in the Enchanted World _at all_.

He took a moment to gather himself. "Your Highness," he saluted, elegantly hinting a bow with his head and shoulders. Jareth looked as unimpressed as ever, but Jefferson was sure that he'd get some kind of reaction yet, once he'd heard him out. "This is my daughter Grace," he continued unwaveringly, though feeling as if he was babbling in the presence of his better. "May we join you for a moment?"

XXXxxxXXX

After all these years, Raven was finally here. Even in her first life, she'd been born long after the civilization that had built the Ice Palace had seen its prime, but it was timeless, foreboding and beautiful all at once. She wasn't sure if this was how she'd imagined it would be. It was impossible to say that this place emitted anything either benignly good or profoundly evil. Nothing remotely comforting or reassuring inspirited it; the Ice Palace merely existed, just asit was, though it did hold an air of grandeur in jagged whites and silvers that could easily be mistaken for a monument to its builders, erected on the same substructures as vanity and pride.

It was neither warm here nor cold, when she compared her current surroundings to the chilly, dank draftiness that seemed ever present in human-made dwellings of stone and mortar throughout each of the four seasons. She had no desire for food, even though she'd been here with Morrigan for some days, but she'd slept deeply and dreamlessly for hours at a time each night.

The fairy princess strode sure-footedly and soundlessly across the ice floor, as though she'd never known any other way to walk on any other kind of ground, tracing her hands deliberately along the glassy walls that reflected every ray of light inside the endless maze of hallways. Small misty tracks remained where her fingers skimmed the smooth surfaces. She had traded her rough, badly-fitting winter clothes for light flowing gowns of delicately woven materials that her human girl's hands had certainly never touched before. The fairy inside appreciated the familiar silky feeling of them on her clean, flawless skin though, and she appeared so completely altered, that she barely recognized herself when she looked at her reflection.

Thinking of all that she'd lost and what she stood to gain from being here now, she approached the Hall of Mirrors through one of two broad, main corridors that led in from the galleries on each side of it. The situation was frightening, but she was almost sure that she'd have the sorcerer's help if she asked for it, even now. She would need him to help her contain her sister, because Morrigan would never stop fighting her and looking for ways to destroy reality as it was.

The older sibling was confined to a frosty prison of sorts within this very Hall, and Raven checked on her daily, renewing the failing wards with growing apprehension. She believed she might not be able to keep the woman that still bore an astounding resemblance to the Evil Queen under control for very much longer, as things were.

To her right, there were seventeen immense, arcading windows on one side of the Hall that overlooked a sheer drop immediately behind the palace, the cascading green valleys with their meandering rivers and natural catchment lakes, and the barren craggy mountains beyond. The lower sections of each window were formed of two enormous panes of glass fixed atop one another, each just over twenty-seven feet wide and seventeen feet high. Above these were two glass panels set side by side, both half the width of the first two, but the same height. The panes over these were sectioned into two rows of three, and the summit of each window was a soft arch with two rows of segment-eighths. The windows, as well as the arched portals directly opposite them on the other side of the wide room were fitted between marmorate columns of frozen water that seemed different every time Raven looked at them, just like the indistinct images within the gateways' blurry superficies themselves.

Morrigan was frozen just inside the entrance of one of these gateways in the intermediate space between this realm and another, but the rippling icy surface that covered the portal had begun to melt, despite everything Raven was doing to prevent it. The younger fairy had the feeling that it wouldn't be long until it dissolved sufficiently to release her iniquitous sibling. Raven had hoped for a little more time.

She knew that the palace was changing and coming back to a life of its own now, not least because the other fairies were returning, and maybe Morrigan's strengthening had something to do with that. She could feel her people arrive, even before the first of their kind had entered the lower citadel through the open posterns in the south wall. None of them would get into the palace though; she was born of one of the original families, and she knew how to seal and protect it well, giving her at least some leeway to work this out yet.

Seven ravens soared through the air above her, rising up and swooping down fluidly between the astronomically high barrel-vaulted ceiling and the glistening floor that faintly reflected it. She watched them for a while, her eyes wandering from the birds to the gigantically-dimensioned frescos above them. They were so big that she thought no living creature could have completed them in one lifetime, no matter how long that lifetime spanned. They depicted riders on horseback; the same four over and over, she realized, as she looked at their faces.

On the first painting, they were portrayed coming out of the undergrowth of an ancient winter forest. The trees and bushes they emerged from were covered with snow, and the thick flakes that were falling all around them actually seemed to be moving on the cool blue background, as though swirling inside a snow globe. Proceeding onwards to the second segment, the same four riders happened upon humanoids and magical creatures at the edge of a rugged, mountainous landscape, eying them warily. The third showed them riding past a heard of centaurs with a flight of geimhreadh-dragons overhead. Trolls and dwarves bowed their heads to them on the one after that, as the four made their way through wheat fields and into a small village on the shores of a great ocean, where human children stood staring at them, wide-eyed and in awe, in the company of goblins and unicorns. The horses leapt across the seemingly undulating waves and over the seas where mermaids flocked on the fifth. They were carried onwards on stardust and by the wind, and landed in another era on the central part of the ceiling mural halfway between both entrances of the Hall. This segment was the largest of them all, and it presented a vicious battlefield, consumed by blue fire. The horseback riders passed through the flames unscathed and appeared to come face-on out of the painting, towards the observer below, their images mirroring eerily on the floor at Raven's feet.

She couldn't see the other sections of the fresco clearly from where she stood, but she'd spent too much time infatuatedly studying them already, so she urgently decided to turn her attention to the more pressing matters of the day, and called one of the ravens to come to her. It swooped down and the fairy princess kneeled next to it. It permitted her to tie a small scroll of parchment to its foot. Slightly irritated by its unaccustomed freight, the bird shook its feathers, but seemed to listen intently to Raven's instructions all the same. Brushing her hand tenderly over the bird's crooked beak, she softly told it where to carry her letter and whom to give it to, and it took wing across the Hall. It coasted out into the corridor that opened into a wide colonnade, and flew from there up into the clear skies. Her eyes followed it for as long as she could make out its shape through one of the massive windows inside.

The note she was sending to the sorcerer was penned on the back of a map that would direct him here, though he'd have to overcome the palace's mysteries by himself to prove his intent. She had an idea of Rumpelstiltskin's nature though, and she was certain that it would lead him down the right path, in the end.

She turned to face one of the portals behind her, several down from where Morrigan was trapped. The mist enshrouding its surface dispersed, as she waved her hand in circling motions across a lower portion of its energy-field, revealing the sorcerer's wife to her for a few precious moments. Her human daughter, and her daughter's daughters and their grandchildren were gone, cherry blossom petals on the wind in a tiny instant of the time that Raven herself had spent in this world in one form or another. Yet Belle was still there, and she was standing in the middle of the temporary room that had formed around a Gatekeeper's moon-spell and that she'd somehow known to cast with the help of a sand dollar and a very strong will, pitted against all odds. Raven felt a deep connection to the young woman who'd managed to get to the place halfway between the World Without Magic and the Enchanted Forest without so much as a blister on her skin.

That heart-felt closeness made it almost unbearable for Raven, when Ernmas suddenly appeared and looked first right at her, just as astonished by their encounter as Raven was. Then, all at once, Ernmas realized that Raven must have been searching for something beyond her reach when she'd attempted to steal a glimpse through this gateway, and the old hag span around to discover Belle, who was talking to someone indiscernible and very much oblivious to the fact that she'd been located by either one of them.

Raven lunged herself at the portal, forgetting for a few seconds that there was nothing she could do from here. As long as all the portals within this Hall were still sealed, no one was going anywhere, and she was repelled by the energy-field so hard that she was thrown backwards several feet through the air. She went crashing to the floor, where she lay and watched despondently as the surface of the arching passageway fogged over once again. Her only comfort was that Ernmas could not touch Belle where she was at this moment – not yet.

XXXxxxXXX

Rumpelstiltskin leaned back on his chair at Mrs. Winslett's desk. There was a full moon high up in the night sky, and its ghostly pale light fell on his face, outlining the sharp features of his nose and deep set eyes. He squeezed them shut and tried to clear his sight, but they were gristly, and he was beyond tired. After taking Henry to his room, he'd spent the past two hours going over his researcher's notes, checking back references, and finally reading the original story Henry had found about the legend of the Ice Palace between realms.

It told of a structure made of sheer light and the icy cold upon a mountain top, and the ancient fairies that had built it. They'd come to this world near the beginning of time reckoning, long before humans had made their home here. Page upon page of vivid descriptions lined the interwoven anecdotes of individual monarchs and their achievements, before the beautifully illustrated chronicle went on to mention an uprising towards the end of that era. A different kind of queen rose to the throne, it said, and she was dark and discontented, longing for the power to rule not only this world but the others they had learned to access. And, she longed for something else: The power to love as humans could love.

It ended there, and Rumple found that quite unsatisfying as he snapped the book shut with a loud thud, irritated by the fact that he had no idea where to start looking for the work that would follow up on this one. He just wasn't capable of rummaging through the stacks and piles of volumes on the floor anymore. Trying to ease away the weariness this day had left him with, he buried his face firmly in both hands and applied them so hard that it almost hurt. He heaved a sigh, and finally conceded to himself that he'd have to muster the energy to lift his body from his seat and get himself to his room presently. Whether or not he'd find restful sleep would remain to be seen.

His vision was still blurry when he rose, but when he looked up, he could see Belle's shape quite distinctly just a few paces away. Her hair was damp and dark, and she was wearing his bathrobe, as though she'd just come out of his bath on their last morning at his home in the World Without Magic. For an instant, his face went blank, and then the pain of recognition spilled over into his eyes. There was nothing he could do against that, and he held his breath without realizing that he was. He rolled his head back on his shoulder and tried to wait out the moment in silence.

To his surprise, she took his hands in her own, and the gentle caress of her fingers on his felt as solid as anything he'd ever touched, even when he knew this could not be.

"You're not real," he mumbled softly, torn between his need to speak with her, even if she wasn't, and the realization that nothing would come of it but anguish. She was gone, and he was imagining that she was there, stroking her thumbs across his knuckles, as she'd done a thousand times.

"Why do you haunt me so?" he whispered, knowing that this dream would dissolve and fade away the second he let go of it. "Everything I've done is streaked and stained with the proof of my failures, and the punishment just won't ever end…"

He dropped to his knees and leaned his cheek against her belly, encircling her with his arms, catching the scent of roses and body lotion, freshly laundered clothes and a hint of Belle herself.

"I'm here, Rumple," she told him quietly, her hands carding his hair back, before she slid down and embraced him "I really _am here_, my love."

It hardly made a difference to him anymore if she was, or if he was conjuring an image of her in his head, and he pulled her desperately close, accepting the comfort he was getting from that.

"I know you think your magic or your pain is doing this, Rumple," Belle breathed into his ear, "but it's _not_, and you have to listen to me and try to remember when I'm gone." She gently cupped his face in her hands and made him look at her. "I haven't got much time, but I wanted you to know that I'm alright, and I needed to know that you are, too."

The sorcerer swallowed a sob, not quite managing to stifle the noise that was coming from somewhere deep in his chest. He let go of her and slowly shook his head in disbelief, willing this to cease. His mind was riddled enough as it was, and he was afraid to loose what he'd just regained of it.

"You're only in my head," he said, just as a cloud silently entered the silvery corona of the stellar disc outside the window. "I let you down. I let you die, you and our baby, and now there's nothing I can do. I see your face _every time_ I close my eyes, but you are elsewhere." He verbally punctuated the last three words as though they were a formula that would cement the fact to his waning sanity.

"I'm not dead, and I'm not elsewhere," she replied, slightly fading, growing less palpable all of a sudden with the receding rays of grey light on her skin. "I'm safe, and so is our baby. I just can't ever return here."

"I know you can't…" he replied, his voice fraught and damaged, as he frantically began groping at thin air, where he could still _just_ see her form but no longer hold her. She was aware that she was hardly visible now, and she fixed her gaze to his, sharing his suffering, and hoped that this wasn't all she was permitted to have. It would be another three weeks in her time until she could see him again, and she begged for one more minute to say what she'd come here to tell him.

The cloud passed swiftly, as the wind drove it onwards, and she returned to her tactile form. "It's alright," she told him soothingly, and then with more insistence, "Hear me out now, there's not much time."

He shifted slightly, raising his hand to stroke her cheek, and she nestled into his palm, placing her own over his in appreciation of his touch. She had hoped for this, but there had been no way to know if the spell was going to work, and she'd been prepared for it not to, so she was taking every second of being here into her heart.

"Time," he repeated, grief breaking his voice. "Time…"

She stopped him there by gently pressing her lips to his in a slow, warm and lingering kiss that would have to last them both for a long time. It made her feel as though she was coming home to him, the magic of it rippling through her still when she drew back and decisively told him, "I'm looking for a way to come back to you, Rumple. I've found a way that we can talk when the moon is full on my side and on yours _three times_. Together, we can figure this out. I'm not giving up. I'm going to fight for us."

She guided his hand towards her middle, placed it where her pregnancy was beginning to swell her abdomen, and felt the tender affection of his touch through the silken fabric that covered her, as he gasped in wonder. The sensation of feeling her bump was overwhelming him, and he pulled back for a second, as though he'd just been hit by live wire, only to replace his hand there gingerly once more – first the pads of his fingers, then the whole palm. She really _was_ here, and he didn't know or give a damn why, but she was alright, and so was their baby.

"Tell me where you are," he whispered, finally believing her. "And tell me what to do."

XXXxxxXXX

"Higher," Rumple told the boy, watching his grandson intently as he laboriously levitated a small pebble a mere inch above the cobble paving. "Much higher."

Henry cast a sideward glance at him, and when he did, the pebble fell right back down to the ground, clattering noisily and skipping several times before it came to rest indiscernibly some way off in the gloom of very early morning. They were sitting on the stone tread that lead up to the kitchen entrance, facing the circular well that represented the centerpiece of the inner courtyard. The sun was not quite yet up over the horizon, so the enclosure was still devoid of the bustling life that would otherwise have made what they were doing here unthinkable.

The sorcerer looked as though he hadn't been to bed at all, but there was something in his eyes that made the boy think that things may have drastically changed since yesterday for some reason; a glint of the bold resolve and determined conviction he'd been lacking seemed to have returned, and he seemed more himself than he had been in a while. He noticed that his grandfather was no longer wearing Belle's ring next to his own and wondered what had made him change his mind in the space of a few hours.

Rumple had woken him long before the castle had begun stirring, insisting that he come with him for his lesson. He'd told him he didn't know if he'd get round to it later in the day because they had things to do and places to go, and although the boy was still miserable with cold and sorely missing the convenience of paper tissues, he was very certainly not going to miss out on what the older man was offering. Henry made up his mind to take whatever he could get from the sorcerer without questioning his motives or whining about small discomforts, so he wiped his nose on his sleeve and started concentrating harder.

Rumpelstiltskin watched with some amusement, as the boy applied himself with fierce intent, wholly absorbed in the music and color that were Henry's magic. The pebble reached to the height of his nose, bobbing slightly on the small field of whirring energy his grandson was creating. The air around it was glimmering like it did over the fields and rooftops on a hot day in summer.

"Better," he told the lad, thinking of what to have him do with it next. "Now, let's see if we can't…" All at once he fell silent, his mouth clamping shut, as every stone, pebble and piece of gravel on the yard began to lift off the ground and hover there with the first.

Arching an eyebrow at the boy, he couldn't help the complacent smile that was spreading slowly from his lips outward all over the rest of his face. This time, when the boy looked at him, returning the grin, the stones stayed suspended where they were – until Emma opened the door at their backs and sleepily peeked out at them. The sight she happened upon with woke her up instantly.

"What are you _doing_?" she asked, not specifying at whom she was directing her question. Henry startled, and the pebbles pelted to the ground.

"Nothing," he answered automatically as he jumped up, his cheeks a dead giveaway in hot signal red when he turned to face her. He met her gaze on a mere second's deliberation without even quite meaning to, and, before there was anything he could do to take back what he'd just thought at her, the creases on her brow began to smooth out, while the corners of her mouth relaxed. Then, she literally _beamed_ at them both toothily in a way that was very unlike Emma, seeming to forget what had just transpired.

"Oh," she said offhandedly, "Alright," and simply turned on her heel to go back inside, closing the door behind her.

The sorcerer snorted a small laugh when he was sure she was out of earshot. He picked up a stone and tossed it in the air from a downward-clenched fist, and skillfully caught it in the same manner in the other hand. When he turned it around and opened his fingers, it had changed into a perfect diamond that sparkled like nothing Henry had ever seen before, reflecting the soft golden light of the rising sun.

"Henry, my friend," Rumpelstiltskin began, his voice stern on the whole, but laced with a tiny amount of wicked frivolity as he handed it to the boy as a trinket that would serve to remind him of this moment when he most needed to be. "I believe we have to talk."

**OOOoooOOO**

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**As always: devout bow to cynicsquest for inspiration and making me think! :)**

**Next chapter: There's some bargaining in store, and some steep prices to pay.**


	5. Waking Magic

5. Waking Magic

Belle woke up to the sound of familiar voices murmuring outside her bedroom door in the corridor of the salmon-colored house. This was strange. She pushed up on her elbows and groaned as Red opened the door and stuck her head inside, blinking at the sudden assault of bright light on her sleepy eyes.

She felt drained, even though she'd slept a solid twelve hours after returning here, provided that the time on the alarm clock on her night stand was correct. The weekday and date above the black hour and minute digits on the grey background were wrong, though, she realized, when she looked at the display more closely. It was off by three days. Maybe she'd have to get some new batteries.

"Look who's awake," Red exclaimed, opening the door back on its hinges to let herself inside. Whale followed behind her, and Belle was confused when Red made straight for the window. The blinds weren't drawn all the way, as she had left them the previous night, and it suddenly occurred to her that at least one of them might have been here while she'd slept, for some reason.

Her hand hurt, and she flexed it, only to find an IV needle and line taped to the back of it. Her breath caught, gaze following the infusion tube to its origin on a pole with an empty saline solution bag beside the bed.

"What's going here?" she queried sharply, throwing back her covers and gingerly shifting to the edge of the mattress. "What _is_ this?"

She knew better than to get on her feet right away; sudden movements straight out of sleep made her head spin and her stomach lurch, and she'd picked herself up off the floor more often than she cared to count. Whale took a few hasty steps towards her, but she raised a hand at him to signal that she had no need – and no want – for his help.

"Just stay where you are and explain this to me," she demanded, concentrating on her feet, as her head grew light, and her vision began to narrow slightly.

Red yanked at the blinds and unlatched the sash lock to open the sliding window, letting in the sunny summer day that was already progressing well into the late afternoon. The fresh air did Belle good almost right away, and she took some deep breaths.

"We were worried about you," Red explained, facing back to her. "So we let ourselves in."

"And you did _this_ just because I _slept in_?" Belle snapped in disbelief, motioning at the tube in her hand.

Whale cleared his throat and shuffled about uncomfortably, avoiding her eyes, as he had a tendency to. "You didn't just _sleep in_," he stated dryly, when Red plunked down on the bed next to her.

Belle's eyes briefly wandered around the room, and she discovered that it had been tidied. Books that she'd left on the empty side of the bed had been stacked into a shelf, clothes had been picked up off the floor and folded onto the dresser, and the used up tins of tea light candles that she'd lit in a circle around the sand dollar on the polished surface were gone. She remembered mumbling Jefferson's spell while looking in the mirror, and the hopes she'd placed in that came flooding back with the memory of being with Rumple.

"I know it's a little late," she started justifying herself, quirking her eyebrows at Red, "but _come on_, you're _not _serious, are you?"

"It's not the _time of day_ we're talking about," Red cut in, placing a hand on Belle's, "It's the _day of the week_, honey. When you didn't show up for dinner on Monday night, we came looking for you."

"But today _is_ Monday," Belle clarified, shaking her head slightly. She withdrew her hand from Red's and disgruntledly began tugging at the needle.

"Here, let me," Whale interjected, before she could rid herself of it on her own. He pushed past Red, knelt in front of Belle, and gently started peeling off the adhesive strips that were keeping the IV place. When he was done, he disconnected the tube and took a small square of cotton swab off the roll on the night stand, pressed it to the back of her hand just over the needle, and pulled to release it.

"Press down on that," he told her, guiding her free hand thumb-on to the swab he was pushing down, before he backed off, rose to his feet and started coiling up the tube. He took the empty infusion bag from its holder and set about disposing of it into a cardboard box beside the pole. There were more bags in the box, Belle noted, _plenty_ more.

"Today's Thursday," Red informed her. "We think you've been asleep since Sunday night, but Victor couldn't find out why."

Belle considered this for a moment. It wasn't altogether improbable: time did move differently in the other world. However, her bladder was starting to let her know that she needed to get to the bathroom right now, so she straightened the pajamas she couldn't remember putting on, and tugged down the hem of the top at the back to make sure it wasn't going anywhere, and rose slowly.

"I think I can explain that," she mumbled, steadying herself.

"Okay…" Red conceded apprehensively, drawing out the vowels and closely following her out of the room. "Right after I make you some breakfast."

Belle waved her off and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Will you be okay?" Red called after her.

"Of course I will," Belle replied, closing the door. "Just give me fifteen minutes. I found out a few things last night that might be helpful in getting all of us out of the mess we're in."

Having showered and dressed quickly after Red and Whale had gone downstairs, she took the sand dollar from the dresser where, thankfully, it still sat, and turned it over in her hand several times, carefully rubbing over the surface with the pad of her index finger. The sun-bleached test had served to do exactly as Jefferson's written instructions had suggested, and of the original fivefold radial pattern on one side, two of the petal-like rows of pores were now closed. That left her with three more opportunities to see Rumple and work out some way of taking care of both Ernmas and Morrigan. He'd asked her for small things from the shop she'd have to set about finding, and he'd told her things she would need to start implementing to protect herself here. There was a lot of work to be done until the next time the night sky above their respective worlds would once again show the same full moon phase.

She pulled out one of the drawers and carefully placed the sea cookie underneath a layer of rolled up socks, just to have it out of sight. Twisting the golden band Rumple had replaced on her finger, she considered that it might be wise to find an alternative hiding-place for that very special magical object in the long run, but the undies would have to do for now. A slow smile spread across her face when she realized that the ring fit her better now than it had last time she'd worn it. It was almost a bit too loose, but it was good to have it back, and coming down the stairs she found that she felt better than she had in weeks. The smell of frying sausages and eggs filled her nose when she arrived in the kitchen, and she realized that she wasn't just hungry – she was _starving_. To hell with it if it came right back out, but she was definitely eating whatever Red intended to put on a plate for her.

XXXxxxXXX

On the whole, David was getting people organized. Both blacksmiths and their apprentices had been working on mattocks, spades, forks, plows and cultivators, using twenty-first century know-how to reshape medieval farming tools and make new ones ever since they'd arrived. They had come up with a lot of things that seemed workable here.

The Charmings had divided up just over two hundred people who'd volunteered to start working the fields in close proximity to the castle and the village in three groups, and these groups had begun clearing and ploughing the inchoate meadows at first opportunity after the worst of the snow and ground frost had receded. They were mostly working with the sweat of their brows and strength of their backs at the moment, since the neglected soil had hardened and the sward had grown deep and tough during the years of their absence. They'd all been in agreement that they'd need to raise a first crop that would root shallowly and grow fast in order to reap an early harvest and solve their food problems as quickly as possible. By some miracle, seed for both corn and spelt had been found.

Still, there had been more people leaving the encampment on the outer castle perimeter recently than coming in, which the sorcerer attributed to two things: first, the improving weather and rising night-time temperatures, and second, the probability that people realized they might not be quite as safe within his fortress as they'd presumed to be. They were facing an enemy that was obviously able to take on different appearances, and the Lady of the Castle had been killed within the same; the circumstances of her death leaving a bitter, bleeding sore that would take a long time to heal. Maybe they thought that since he couldn't keep his own wife out of harm's way, the sorcerer's ability to keep them safe would be equally improbable. Morrigan was gone for now, but who was to say where Raven had taken her, or how long she'd be kept there?

Rumple had been giving Raven a great deal of thought; he was sure that the younger fairy sister would have brought Morrigan someplace where she had hope of tapping into a magic that could help her either contain the evil witch or blast her out of this world altogether. He was hoping for the latter, but wouldn't put money on it. If Raven had that kind of power, she would have used it the night Morrigan had stabbed Belle.

The sorcerer met David and a group of fifty volunteers at the outer gate. The shepherd king briefed him on the progress of the village fields, and then left with a small escort of soldiers who would guard them and hunt for fresh meat. As the group left, he spied a crow circling closely overhead, a message tied to its foot. He stretched out his left arm, palm downwards and fingers closed, and it landed on his wrist, digging thick talons into the soft leather of his coat sleeve. He gently unfastened the parchment from its foot and unfolded it, while the bird hastily took wing and flew away, downy feathers ruffling on the wind.

Going over the neat, delicate penmanship on the parchment twice, Rumple's face creased with worry. He made the connection between what he'd seen in Raven's visions of her last night as Badhbh and what he'd learned from the research they'd been doing. Belle's summary of her own findings confirmed that he'd been right in his thinking all along. However, the Ice Palace was the best, and at the same time, the worst possible place for the sisters to be. And, if the book was on its way there, Raven would need all the help she could get, as fast as they could get it to her. He just wasn't entirely sure if anything he could do would be enough; at least not on his own… There was a great concentration of universal, elementary power at that place, and there was no telling of its dispositional nature, no guessing how it would play out for a human sorcerer's hand to be mixed up in a magic that he had but the haziest notion of. He'd need to be well prepared, and he'd have to access channels he'd never used before; a mortal among Ancients – this would indeed be a challenge, though one he didn't intend to shy away from.

He turned the note over and studied the map on the back. Since this was going to be quite a journey, he would have to leave as soon as possible. The message must have been several days in getting to him as the crow flies, and he wouldn't be travelling alone – or so he hoped – so he couldn't ask the winter-dragon, Anam, to carry him, though he would summon him, glad for his company and protection along the way. He folded the paper down on itself in the middle, tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat and walked briskly back towards the castle. On his way, he stopped one of the armed guards heading for his post.

"Find Colm Messenger and Robin Hood. Tell them both to meet me in the great hall at noon," he told the man gruffly in passing. The guard nodded and hurried away.

Rumple knew that Robin hadn't left the castle grounds this morning because he'd spent most of the night out at the village, searching the huts and hovels with Bae. Bertha had informed him that they'd both returned shortly before dawn, around the time Rumple had woken Henry to practice his magic. After giving Henry his lesson, he'd looked for Bae to see if he was up to joining David on the fields, but hadn't been able to locate him, as was often the case, and the bowman had been fast asleep. He'd need to be roused now, though – they had places to go and people to see.

Rumple wanted Messenger, because they shared some history, and he trusted him. The tall, but remarkably nondescript man was a shape-shifter that could change himself into what his first name meant in the old language – a dove. He had returned to these parts some time during the week after Belle had gone, and although he had not been granted entry by the castle's wards, no one who had knowledge of his connection to the sorcerer would ever have questioned his motives or his loyalty to Rumpelstiltskin and chased him off. The shifter had simply waited outside the gates until things had calmed, and, being a very private person, he'd wordlessly settled himself in somewhere on the grounds when he'd finally been admitted. _Somewhere on the grounds_ was not anywhere that most people were aware of, and the castle perimeter was huge, so Rumple calculated that the guard would be a while in looking for him.

Taking the back staircase two steps at a time, the sorcerer decided to give Mrs. Winslett a fair warning about what was in store before Messenger showed up. _Dove_ could be a bit intimidating, and he needed her to cooperate with him. She'd have to keep digging through his library to find anything that could be useful, and feed him the information he needed along the way. Messenger would have to act as their go-between.

He found her in the Kindergarten with a group of children singing some song about an itsy bitsy caterpillar going up a spout – _down came the rain, and washed the caterpillar out… _

"Wasn't 'Itsy Bitsy' a spider?" he mumbled at her, frowning and doubting his own judgment, when the last note had been sung and the finger-and-thumb climbing was all done. Most of the children were being picked up by their parents, and those who were staying later began dispersing throughout the room. She turned to face him, arching an eyebrow.

"Spiders are bloodsucking little vampires with no redeeming qualities whatsoever," she stated flatly, a look of utter distaste winging her eyes and lips as she steered towards her newest volunteer: a somewhat bedraggled looking Ella, who was awkwardly trying to calm two crying infants with a puppet.

"So there it is," the sorcerer commented, walking alongside her. A wicked smile crept across his face, and his fingers fidgeted through the air. "Finally. Your _weakness_, dearie."

"That's not a weakness, _dearie_, that's just plain disgust at one of nature's less felicitous creations. And self-preservation. Your specialty, I believe," she suggested, a derisive gleam in her green eyes that was just short of his most devilish look_. _"Besides, creepy-crawly is creepy-crawly, and caterpillars work better for four-year-olds than spider do, believe me."

Rumple evaluated this for a second and tried to think of some smart reply, just as Mrs. Winslett decided she'd have to intervene with the scene unfolding in front of her, princess or not.

_How could a woman who already had a child of her own still be so clueless,_ she thought. _Noble people nowadays!_ Heaving a sigh, she lifted one of the girls from the rug onto her hip, stroked back a lock of hair from the child's small round face and dried off her tears with the pads of her thumbs.

"You have to take them up on your arm and get contact," she told her majesty patiently, taking the puppet from Ella and absently tossing it into one of the boxes on the floor. "They're young, milady, but they're not _dense_." Sniffing, she handed the little one to Ella and added a little more softly, "And in case you haven't noticed, this one needs a change, dear."

Ella couldn't believe her luck and scowled. She hated this; disposable diapers were definitely one of the most significant achievements of the modern age in the World Without Magic, and as long as Proctor and Gamble weren't setting up production facilities here, she'd have to reconsider coming back the next day. Alexandra was keeping her busy enough as it was, and she didn't know how she'd let Snow talk her into this in the first place.

Mrs. Winslett gave the younger woman one last encouraging pat on the shoulder and returned her attention to the sorcerer, some other pressing situation already manifesting in the corner of her eye. She decided to let it go in favor of the sorcerer's concern, though. "I just can't talk here," she confessed, throwing her hands in the air, "Where to?"

He smirked and led her towards the staircase. "There's someone I'd like you to meet," he told her. "You'll be working with him in my absence during the next weeks."

"Oh?" she began, her brow furrowing. "New developments I don't know about yet?"

"I know how to find the Ice Palace," he told her, keeping his voice low as he opened the safety gate and gestured her to go first with a little bow and motion of his hand.

Chewing her lower lip, she took another quick look around the attic room to make sure that all was well with the helpers and the children, the smile she wore on principle waning, and descended the stairs ahead of him. "How did you figure that out?" she asked.

"A little bird told me," he grinned, handing her Raven's message over her shoulder.

She stopped on the bottom tread to skim it, eyebrows quirking, as she turned it over. "Oh my. Not good…"

"Well, we'll just have to see what we can do about that, won't we?" What he really meant to say was that, on the whole, he had a very clear idea or two about how he would like to rid this world of Morrigan, hopefully before she managed to free herself, but being graphic about the details of his phantasies rarely proved helpful in any way, so he kept them to himself. Apart from that, what he had in mind might, objectively speaking, not work out quite as he'd like it to, so, on a sane and sober plane, he would definitely need her help in dealing with the witch, based on what she might yet be able to unearth about binding or destroying the pure-blooded descendant of an ancient fairy queen within the next weeks. She would not be spending much time at the Kindergarten anymore, and he'd have to assign more guards to her.

"You might not be able to get into the citadel…" she reminded him. "You're human. And what about Roland?"

"I know." His lips narrowed and his brows knitted as they turned the corner into the third floor corridor. "But that's where you come in. I really think that whoever took him and the book is on his way to the Ice Palace, because we definitely know now that Morrigan is there. No matter what we do, the lad's situation won't improve if I stay here much longer, so there's no time to be lost." He stopped for a moment to look at her and get her take on this assessment, and she nodded.

"I'll be taking Robin, and hopefully Emma and Henry along," he continued. "With a bit of luck and tailwind, we may be able to catch up and cut Jareth – or whoever has Roland – off. However, if we're not in time, we'll find a way to get past the citadel's wards anyway. We will get him back."

Raven had let him know that she couldn't lift the enchantments on the walls on her own; she needed the Gatekeepers that cast them, but Rumpelstiltskin was king of loopholes. No rule of magic was ever quite without exception, and in the three hundred years he'd spent working it in most every corner of this dimension, he'd rarely come across a barrier he couldn't overcome – aside from crossing realms by his own means.

"So you want me to figure out how to get you inside and let you know while you're on the move," she concluded, doing her best to match his stride on the soft red carpeting. "We haven't invented the cell phone yet, though, so that's going to be a problem…"

"Not with Mr. Messenger around, I assure you."

They descended the last few stairs of the broad stairwell towards the main entrance, and to Rumple's surprise, Robin was already in the great hall, along with Bae, Emma, Snow and, strangely, David – whom he had just seen off a half an hour ago. Obviously, he'd returned for some important reason. Messenger was nowhere to be seen, as expected, but Granny sat at the fireplace, knitting, which baffled the sorcerer somewhat, given that she'd been very withdrawn lately.

The small group had been waiting for him, and he could tell by their faces that something was off, and this wasn't about some stray ogre in the woods or a hungry wolf in the orchard. They'd been talking about him, and there was definitely a whiff of mutiny in the air. The bowman looked thoroughly haunted, and the fact that he was awake and here now, standing next to Bae and not out searching for his boy had to mean something was afoot.

Nonetheless, Rumpelstiltskin leisurely poured himself some water from a large jug on the table and took a seat, relaxing back in his chair and crossing his legs.

"So, what's the meaning of this?" he began quietly, wondering what he'd done to warrant the severe and harried looks he was getting, and whether or not it would be wise to tackle this peculiar situation on an empty stomach. "Has something happened?"

"I asked that they all be here," Bae told him. "There's something we need to discuss."

Knowing his son, Rumple decided that Bae looked far too calm to be anything nearly that.

Mrs. Winslett opted for a quick, low profile escape and made for the door, intent on looking for Messenger herself. She was fairly certain that there would again be much talk here, as there always seemed to be whenever the Charmings and Bae were in one room together. This was not for her; there were more productive ways of using her time, all the while a little boy was missing and Morrigan was an apocalypse just waiting to happen.

David and Snow sat across from Rumple at the other end of the table and remained silent, obviously just as unprepared for this spontaneous little conference as the sorcerer was himself, and waiting out the situation. Emma hovered around Granny's chair, but she didn't seem in any way nervous at all, on the contrary.

Rumpelstiltskin plastered indifference to his face and directed his gaze at each of them in turn blankly before resting it on his son. "Well? I'm listening."

Bae pulled out a chair next to his father, cleared his throat and seated himself, shoulders round and slouching forward towards him. "Papa, we were at Regina's palace."

The sorcerer drew a deep breath, shifting his legs about. That's why they'd been gone so long. "And were you… _troubled_ by what you found there?" he queried, eyes darting from his son to Robin. He could imagine what they must have been thinking when they found the Evil Queen slumbering amidst the ruins of her life's toils and labors.

"Well," Robin conceded, when Bae didn't answer right away, "not entirely." He leaned against the window sill, placing a hand on either side of his hips, the hint of a smirk on his weary face. "_Shocked_ might be the more appropriate word, maybe," he drawled, making a hapless attempt to look the part. "But that's beside the point, given the situation. I take it you knew she was there?"

Rumple nodded curtly. "Unfortunately, though, none of my doing."

Bae cast a disbelieving glance at Robin, who merely shrugged impassively, tilting his head slightly in a gesture that said _I_ _told you so_.

"We went down into the tunnels from there," Bae continued after a moment, rearranging his feet on the floor.

Rumple had thought as much. Smart boy. He'd spent a lifetime lying low, and _of course_ he'd be apt to find other people's hidey holes and secret passageways. The sorcerer knew where his son was going with this, and it occurred to him that it might have been prudent to conceal the tunnel's entrances. If he'd taken the time to do so, he could have avoided this conversation and saved them all a lot of back and forth.

"Did you know that the portal has been repaired?" Bae put forward without further ado, noting the deliberate unaffectedness in his father's expression. "Did you know it was working?"

Rumple looked him in the eye with no intention of lying to him or anyone else present. "I did."

"So you managed to fix it after all, without telling us?" David inquired calmly, leaning on his arms.

"Again, none of my doing, unfortunately," the sorcerer replied.

"But then, who did?" Snow wondered. "Who would have known how?"

Rumple shifted in his seat to face her. "I certainly don't. But if I was to take a wild guess, I'd bet on that pesky little fairy who helped destroy it in the first place."

"Tinkerbell?" Emma asked incredulously, moving around the room to stand next to Robin. "Would she have been able to pull this off on her own?"

"No," the sorcerer returned, inhaling sharply through his teeth. "She would have needed help."

"The dwarves…" Snow concluded from that. "But none of them returned with us… at least we thought they didn't."

Rumple took another drink of water. "Obviously, they did, or there wouldn't have been any fairy dust to power it."

"Does it lead to Storybrooke, like it did before?" Emma inquired taking a few more steps towards the group at the table.

"It doesn't lead _anywhere_ anymore," Bae snapped, losing his patience as he looked up at her. "It's sealed, and there's only one person in this room who can do that kind of thing." He turned back to his father, glaring at him. "Well?" he demanded cuttingly, "Did you?"

"Yes, I did." Plain and simple.

Granny stopped knitting, eyes wide, and Snow held her breath, not knowing what to think. David took her hand in his.

Bae's chair grated harshly over the floor tiles as he jumped up and turned away from Rumple briefly, aware that he was unable to conceal what he felt at this moment, but his eyes gave him away to Robin, who was more unsettled at the momentum of the anger and regret he found in the younger man's face than at the fact that there was a world beyond this one they might or might not be interested in traveling to. He had other problems to contend with, and he couldn't for the life of him fathom the relevance of all this right now. It was highly improbable that they were going to find either Roland or the book by standing around here and discussing the sorcerer's crime of withholding information on a gateway to the World Without Magic.

"So, this portal works, but you… sealed it shut, and now no one can use it?" David asked back, just to be sure that he'd heard right. Not that he was very fond of the idea of going back to Storybrooke; he was firmly convinced that they could make things work out for them here, where they belonged. Snow wasn't altogether of the same opinion, but she was still sorting through her thoughts on that.

"Yes," the sorcerer repeated.

"Well, you're going to lift whatever spell you put on it and open it," Bae stipulated, jabbing a finger downwards in front of Rumple.

"Can't do that, I'm afraid…" Rumple began collectedly, but Bae cut him off in mid-sentence.

"You think _you_ _alone_ get to decide this?" he spat. His voice was nothing short of furious growl and rising with each word. "What gives you the right to close a working portal that could get us all out of this miserable pit? _You will open it!_"

"No," the older man refused firmly, getting to his feet to face his son on eye level. "Bae, listen to me for one second…"

"_Listen to_ _you_? It's always about _you_, and it's always the same, isn't it?" Bae snubbed him brusquely in clipped tones, fraught with resentment and bitterness as old as the man himself, "Every time I think you've turned a new leaf, you prove that you're not capable of changing. I'm not interested in your lies, or whatever reasons you're going to dish out for sneaking around behind our backs and keeping this from us. This, and God knows what else."

"Bae, you have to calm down and hear me out…" the sorcerer rephrased himself carefully, balancing his tone, but Bae had already turned his back and was heading for the arched doorway.

"Not interested. We're through," he pronounced, waving off dismissively and leaving the room.

Rumple knew better than to follow him; there was no way that he'd get him to see sense now, given the state he was currently in. Bae had always been headstrong and inclined to storm off whenever they'd had their differences. He was very undeniably his mother's son in that respect. She'd managed to turn walking away from a discussion into an art, until Rumple had stopped arguing with her altogether, but Bae had generally calmed down after a while, and he'd been willing to come back at some stage to talk things over with a clearer perspective. Unlike Milah, he'd been more reflective of things, more willing to find a common denominator and get closure, but maybe that just wasn't who he was anymore, after all these years, and, undeniably, all that he'd been through because of his father's cowardice.

Emma dipped her head and considered what she'd heard for a moment before pulling Rumple from his thoughts. "Well…" she began, "even if Bae isn't, I'd be interested in getting all the facts and an explanation for that so we can move on here, and get back to the problems at hand."

XXXxxxXXX

_Belle was generally careful to lock the door behind herself whenever she went into the shop. She had an acute dislike for unexpected visitors. Although today she'd just have to deal with it; she was actually hoping for someone to break down that door this very morning, but she shut it firmly and locked it anyway for the fair warning she'd get from the breaking glass and splintering wood that would announce her guest. _

_She set her lunch bag and bottled water on the table in the back room between the stacks of books she'd been sifting through, nervously running a hand through her hair and releasing a deep breath slowly. She'd already gotten everything really important to safety and stashed away the things Rumple had asked her for, just in case, and looking around, there wasn't much she'd sorely miss, even if this whole building went up in smoke in the end. _

XXXxxxXXX

The sorcerer moved around the table and lowered himself back down on his chair, feeling his age.

"He doesn't trust me," he mumbled, referring to his son. "He has no reason to. I've caused too much damage in the past, and it was foolish to think that I could just make that go away." He slumped back, straightening his legs and rubbing the pad of his thumb over the curved arm of his chair.

Snow set the cup she'd been nipping on down in front of her, but held on to it, absently tilting it this way and that. "If what you just told us is true, then you had a good reason to seal that portal – and reopening it is not an option."

"I think she's right," Robin said, leaning in to his friend slightly from above, hands resting on the table. "We've got enough to contend with here right now without unleashing another evil witch on this world."

Rumple's gaze was fixed to his feet, eyebrows knitted, and teeth clamped.

"Hold on," David interrupted, still not getting this together, even though Henry had repeatedly given him a blow-by-blow account of what had happened at Regina's mausoleum weeks ago. It was beyond him that they could have been so thoroughly fooled by Blue. "When last I encountered her, she was the _Blue Fairy_, and she was trying to help us…"

"Yah," Granny exclaimed gruffly sounding a lot like Red. She carelessly flung both needles and the coarse wool she'd been working with back into the basket at her feet, folded her arms across her chest resolutely and glowered at him. "And then she tried to kill Henry."

XXXxxxXXX

_Belle seated herself at the table in the back room with a cup of tea and opened a first edition by a certain Currer Bell that she'd found at the library, purely for the enjoyment of it: Jane Eyre. She'd read it before in hospital, right after she'd been shot and lost her memory, and going back on this novel was like visiting an old friend that had helped her through a tough time. The cup that sat at her elbow was Rumple's; it was the one she'd chipped on her very first day at his castle, when she'd been his maid. Its steaming contents slowly grew cold as she turned the pages. _

_After just over an hour, she marked her page, put the book aside and got up to stretch her legs, wondering how Red was doing and how much longer Ernmas would be. She wasn't so sure anymore that this plan was going to work out, but it was too late to abandon it now: the dice were cast._

_If Ernmas was taking the bait, Red would be alone in the tunnels with Tink and Hook right now, and she would be preparing the portal's entrance. Two moonstones; one at each side of the gateway, one more in her pocket to make three when Ernmas had entered the portal, rowan and salt within reach. _

_For the fun of it, Belle mumbled a little spell she'd learned, making clockwise circling motions towards the shelves of broken knick-knack on the far wall with both her hands. The objects Rumple had so obsessively stored there began rising up in the air, spinning and dancing to the music that was Belle's magic; this was none of the baby's doing, only her very own. She was getting good, and it was growing on her. She was confident that the more she practiced and the more she learned, the better she would be able to take things into her own hands. No way was she ever going back to being that helpless girl in the dungeon, in the tower, or in the mental ward. She was taking control of things because she had too much at stake not to, and Ernmas was going to be surprised to find an opponent in her who had more than enough means to give her a good run for her money, possibly even a really miserable time._

XXXxxxXXX

"Neither Morrigan nor Ernmas will stop at anything, and we need to find a way to bind or destroy them both and keep them out of this world indefinitely," Rumple told them. "We'll never see the end of this otherwise." He hesitated to elaborate, but finally decided to go on and tell them everything. "Belle was here last night."

Emma's eyes narrowed at Robin, who was slightly unsettled by his friend's revelation, and Snow and David exchanged a disconcerting glance.

The sorcerer had expected this. "I know it sounds crazy," he continued, raising a defensive hand, "but she _was_ here. Actually, right now she's back in Storybrooke with Red, Dr. Whale, the annoying and soon to be dead Tinkerbell, a handful of dwarves, a certain pirate, and the Blue Fairy, also known as Ernmas, who, incidentally would happen to be Morrigan's mother. But last night, she was here."

Snow quite frankly thought he was finally going over the edge – the one he'd been walking, dancing and skipping along for all the time she'd known him – but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and follow him on this just a little further. "How…?" she began, but clamped her mouth shut when she found that she didn't even know where to begin asking questions.

Rumple refilled his cup with water from the jug, wishing for something just a little bit stronger. He had to tell them everything he knew, or he'd have no hope of keeping their trust and getting Emma to go along with what he'd been meaning to suggest to them before this unpleasant situation with Bae had erupted.

XXXxxxXXX

_There was no splintering of wood or breaking of glass; just a loud thud, as the back door flew open on its hinges and Ernmas entered the shop. Spinning around, Belle tried to look as distraught as possible._

_"I've been looking for you," the fairy queen told her. "Did you really think you could hide from me here? This a small town, and I can feel your magic, dear!"_

_Belle was wary, but not afraid of the pale, hollow-faced, wispy-haired, ragged creature that was standing in front of her, so not serenely fae-like or even remotely the tidy, if unspectacular woman that had been Mother Superior. In fact, she thought that the fairy queen looked a lot less intimidating than on their last encounter at Regina's crypt, when she'd still been throwing snakes and fireballs at them. Waning power, perhaps? In any case, there was little this sorry, bent old hag could say or do to her that she hadn't already been through. Heck, she'd been kidnapped and shot at, she'd slain ogres, crossed realms, died and not gone to heaven – what could there possibly still be to come?_

_"I'm shaking in my boots," she muttered sardonically, but remembering her part, added a little more loudly, "How did you find me?" when she full well knew._

_"Unfortunately, your good friend, the wolf-girl, couldn't keep her mouth shut and told Tinkerbell about you. Understand that Tinkerbell is my kind, and fairies don't get to keep secrets from one another," Ernmas revealed smugly. "How lucky for me that you managed to get yourself killed in the Enchanted World, because now you're here, you might as well help me break the seal on that portal."_

_Most certainly not, Belle thought, and casually waved a hand at Ernmas, throwing her back on her behind just for the pleasure of watching her fall, for all the terror she was spreading amongst her friends. She could see that the Blue Fairy was perturbed, but only for a second. Then, the hag that Mother Superior had become on her journey through these past weeks and months drew herself back up on her feet and whipped out a hurricane of whirling wind in the small room, weakening herself as a consequence she'd be willing to endure for the prize that awaited. It scooped them both up and took them away to the tunnels._

XXXxxxXXX

Snow and David were both at a loss. Ultimately, Emma would have to decide whether or not she and Henry would go along with what the sorcerer was suggesting, but Snow was sure that she wasn't going to like it. It was too dangerous. Rumpelstiltskin was mortal, and she didn't trust that he would be able to protect Henry the way that he might have, had he still been the Dark One. Emma's magic was raw and unused, and she was sure that her daughter didn't appreciate the kind of dangers that were lurking out there for her. She wasn't of this world, and Snow just couldn't picture her going through with a thing like this.

Emma sat quietly at the fire, staring into the flames. Robin was at her back, his palms tenderly rubbing her shoulders.

"I don't want Henry in on this any more than you do," he told her. "But he would be safer with us than he is here, believe me."

Emma half turned and looked up at him, grasping his hand. "I know," she mumbled. "That's why if I go, he's coming with us."

XXXxxxXXX

_Belle had difficulty keeping her bearings but she was paying attention. The second they touched ground in the dark, dank cave where the portal stood, she lunged herself at Ernmas, emitting a faint golden glow that was nothing like she'd possessed in the Enchanted World when the baby had still been afflicted by its father's curse. It was still enough to help her repel the old hag and fling her back towards the entrance of the gateway, though. Ernmas hardly knew what hit her, and Belle was so fast in dealing with the situation, that the dwarves, who were coming out of their hiding-places wielding their pickaxes barely had a chance to see what was happening._

_Desperately, Blue made one last, feeble attempt to drag Belle inside the portal with her, but she wasn't strong enough to pit herself against the woman who had far more to lose than she did, and when the old fairy queen disappeared into the static, Red emerged from behind one of the rusty old mining carts and positioned the final moonstone at the center of the portal's threshold, closing the circuit. The dwarves lowered their axes, which they would obviously not be needing, and began forming a semi-circle around Belle's back. _

_Belle hunkered down, closed her eyes and began mumbling the spell she had committed to her memory for this moment. She recited it over and over, as Red generously poured salt, and one of the dwarves began arranging twigs of rowan on the ground near the stones for good measure. Tinkerbell stood some way off from Belle, mouth agape, while Hook, holding his breath, accidentally ventured too far and hit his head on the force-field that confined him. _

_When Belle regained her feet, Whale and Red stepped up next to her, awaiting the outcome of their actions. A pale shadow appeared on the icy surface of the gateway. It lingered there for a while, but then receded, and after that…_

_Nothing. _

_They were done here, and the dwarves started cheering._

_Belle laughed out loud in relief, feeling ridiculously elated by what she'd just accomplished with the most simple of means, and she hugged Red heartily. Even Whale hinted a happy face. They had really managed to imprison Ernmas within her own portal for now, and they'd all be safe from her for a while. And so was the Enchanted World. _

_Turning to Tinkerbell, who was still skulking in the shadows behind her, she smiled. "Now, let's see what we can do about getting you all back. We can do this together."_

**OOOoooOOO**

**Thank you for favoriting, following. Love the reviews and encouragement – cynicsquest, Twyla Mercedes, Grace5231973, katido and CJ Moliere**

**Special thanks again for everything to my wonderful Beta, cynicsquest, who is thinking this with me all the way.**

**Next: The Gatekeeper returns, Belle and Rumple steal some quality time (hmmm... might need to change the rating on this story, since this poor couple never seems to get any alone-time at all...) and Red rediscovers the twenty-first century.**


	6. As The Crow Flies (M rated)

**Smut Warning: This chapter is the reason I changed the rating on this story. There is another, edited version of it right after this one, so if you are not comfortable with the M rating here, you can just skip to the next chapter and still be up to date on the latest developments.**

6. As The Crow Flies (M)

Rumpelstiltskin pushed back the rug on the floor beside his bed, and pictured the floorboard he'd hidden the Dark One's dagger beneath coming loose. The cracks in the oak parquette darkened and became more prominent, revealing the right one that soon began setting itself off from the others. He envisioned it sliding back, and it did, exposing the long beige leather sheath with the straight, inconspicuous black hilt protruding from the opening at the top.

He reached in and retrieved it, pulling the meandered blade from its worn scabbard until he could see the intricately woven patterns that had once framed his name on the steel surface. It was still smeared with Belle's blood, but the ornate lettering that had been etched into the metal was gone without replacement, leaving him with no clue of what was to follow. He knew little more of the curse's history beyond the specific ramifications that had been implanted within his memory when he'd killed Zoso for it, but there was, in all probability, more. There had to be, or this situation wouldn't have occurred.

He closed the floorboard, replaced the rug, and set about cleaning the dagger carefully with the damp rag he'd brought up with him. It wouldn't do to give it back to Belle in this state. She'd asked for it, and he couldn't think of a better or more remote place for it right now than Storybrooke. Just what she intended to do with it was beyond him, but he had no reason to question or refuse her. Handing over that dagger meant trust, and if she still trusted him, even after he had failed her again so completely, then he would give that trust right back to her. It was the very least, and, at the same time, the most he could do for her from here.

"Are you coming?" Henry asked, startling him. The sorcerer didn't know how long his grandson had been watching him from the doorway, but he smiled up at him and nodded.

"Are the horses ready?" he inquired, sliding the dagger back into its sheath.

"All saddled," the boy returned, eyes fixed on the black hilt for a moment too long. Rumple had taken note of the expression on his face. The fascination that emanated from this dark object was consuming, and even Henry could feel its pull. The moment was there and gone in a second, and to his relief, Rumple presently ascertained that the boy was itching to go. He'd hardly been off the castle grounds in all the weeks he'd been here, and it was obvious that he was excited to see the world his ancestors had been born to. He had reason to be. It was both beautiful and horrible, kind and vicious, providing and taxing.

He remembered the better years of his youth, when he'd been around Henry's age and living with the spinsters. There was something to be said for the internet and microwave ovens, but the freedom and natural magic of the Enchanted Forest was beyond anything the World Without Magic had to offer. There were ogres, trolls and wolves in those woods, and it was a dangerous place to be if you were alone, but there were also unicorns and enchanted waterfalls, floating mountains, dragons and overgrown paths to hidden towers. The treasures of this world were not weighed in gold and silver – security bonds, real estate, insurance or dollars and cents; they were the intensity of life as it could never be in a place where clocks, traffic lights, bus schedules and higher education determined and regulated a teenager's actions. Henry's perception and self-awareness would never be the same again, Rumple thought. No, having this would be much richer and more rewarding than getting an A in English or playing a video game after supper, applying for some college stipendium in a few years and living out his days watching his cholesterol and blood-pressure rise with every senseless divorce court battle he fought or hopeless patient he lost. He might never go to college or take his girlfriend to the movies, but he would one day be a powerful sorcerer and rule over an entire kingdom of wonders.

Rumpelstiltskin tucked the dagger into his belt, shouldered a backpack with the things he'd be taking along, and picked up Belle's dragon-slough cloak from the bed, where he'd tossed it earlier. He took a moment to gather himself, when the memories connected with the feel of the soft fabric in his hand hit him, but then turned to his grandson and held it out to him.

"It might be a bit big yet, but you'll grow into it… and I'm sure that it'll grow on you," he told the boy.

Henry's face mirrored his bewilderment. He was completely cognizant of the quality, importance and meaning of the gift he was being offered, and wasn't entirely certain if he could accept it. He knew how significant and personally valuable Belle's cape was to his grandfather, but Rumple insistently stood his ground and gave him a small assuring nod. The soft brown eyes fixed to his own told of deep-lying hurt and darkness beneath the surface, but they also spoke of hope, profoundly heartfelt kindness and caring towards him. Accepting the gift for the love it represented, he set down his own travelling bag and took it. It was breathtakingly superb to look at and felt lighter than he'd ever imagined a piece of clothing to be. Spontaneously, but awkwardly, he embraced the older man, and mumbled his thanks.

Taking a last wistful look around the room as Henry set off down the corridor, the sorcerer closed the door behind himself quietly.

XXXxxxXXX

Youtube, Twitter and fanfiction – what more could she ask for? Red was back online. With Ernmas gone and Belle doing her thing, they had their old Storybrooke back. Not that anyone was willing to try and cross the town line just yet, but cable TV and broadband connectivity were back, and the phones were working again.

She hadn't left the fan-site of the fairy-tale based show she'd been following before the crap had hit the fan in winter all night long, catching up with the AU-craziness and smut her followed and favorited authors had been posting in her absence. It was all Belle could do to get her friend to come to a belated brunch in the kitchen of Gabriel Gold's – her – house. They had been celebrating there with a big dinner that had all the fixings the previous evening, and empty bottles of wine and foil wrappers, dirty dishes and glasses still cluttered the sink because she'd forgotten to start the dishwasher, but she'd cleared and wiped the table, and there was food, juice and coffee on it. The radio was playing.

Red seated herself, yawned, and stretched sinuously, as Belle poured her a cup. She took it in both hands and relished the comforting warmth and aroma.

"Wonderful," she said. "Thank you."

"So, how's the Oncers community been holding up without your reviews?" Belle smirked, putting down the coffee pot and sitting opposite her. "Anyone miss you?"

"Aw, hell yah!" Red exclaimed, taking a sip of the hot brew. "The girl I was betaing for all but gave up. With all that's been going on here, I might just publish a little something myself sometime."

She reached for the French Bread, crispy on the outside, fluffy and soft inside – courtesy of Jeffrey, who now had time to bake again, as he had done at the local bakery before the second curse, and before Ernmas had forced the dwarves down into the mines. Cutting off some of the baguette for herself and for Belle, she considered the egg salad, but decided on the marmalade instead for starters.

Belle took her piece and spread some cream cheese on it. "They'd think you're out of your mind, but the stats would go off the chart."

XXXxxxXXX

They were making good progress on the first length of their journey, but the days were long for Henry and Emma, who were unused to sitting in a saddle for hours at a time, and had difficulty sleeping out in the open. Emma awoke stiff and aching most mornings, and Henry had needed Rumple to heal a sore or two in delicate places. However, they were learning by doing, and, all things considered, the sorcerer thought they were getting the hang of it by the time they reached a wide river bank that had obviously seen a lot of travelers recently.

There were blackened fire-pits on the cobble beach, and trees had been felled for their wood on the edge of the greening forest. They dismounted and had a look around. The sorcerer knew that, sometimes, the things left behind by the weary told their story if you just listened intently enough, and he set about picking around the rocky strand meticulously, searching for something that might have a tale for them. Emma and Henry tended to the horses, while Robin went back into the woods to set a few traps that would catch them supper.

"Do you think it's still far?" Henry asked his mother, setting a saddlebag down at his feet.

She shrugged, rubbing her back, which was giving her a lot of trouble. She had a hard time straightening. "Your grandfather said something about a few weeks, so I guess we may be getting close." At least she hoped so, her look said, as she lugged her saddle to the ground. If she was very honest, she was losing track of time. They had seen so many things that had filled her heart and her head since they'd left the castle that she was starting to jumble them; travelling this world on horseback with a sorcerer and Robin Hood was like living in a beautiful dream. If only the reason for this wasn't Roland…

One of the most impressive things they'd come across so far was a large herd of black unicorns on the open range. She'd watched the magnificent creatures grazing on the new grass of a seemingly endless meadow, but they had been scattered like leaves on the wind by Anams shadow as he'd passed overhead, carrying her son.

Henry could hardly get enough of Anam. He'd asked to ride him several times, and, to him, there was nothing to compare with the thrill he got from that. Looking at that herd of unicorns racing across the fields from above, the wind in his hair and the warm, fire-breathing winterdragon beneath him, he felt every bit the prince his grandparents kept telling him he was. There was nothing remotely royal about him, he thought – not in the sense that he would know how to dance, bow or fence, like those prats from the Disney movies he'd seen, but he was learning to shoot a straight arrow from Robin, and his grandfather was teaching him to use the sword David had given him for a present when they'd left. He was practicing his magic and getting better by the day, and he was _riding a dragon_.

Emma was so proud of her son. It was exciting and scary at the same time to see the way he was embracing this place and the new things he was learning here. She was seeing a side to him that she knew _never_ would have emerged in New York. They'd had a good life there, but even though she was hurting all over, and there wasn't a decent bathroom or deli anywhere in the land, she was beginning to sense that their life might be good here, too. The mission they were on didn't seem like one at all, so far. It was more like they were taking a long sight-seeing trip right now in great haste, all the while trying to catch up with Roland's abductor and worrying that time was getting away from them with every hour they needed to rest themselves and the horses. She wasn't so naïve to believe that the, relatively speaking, agreeable and harmless part of this trip would remain so for much longer, but there was so much good in it for Henry and her all the same.

She loved watching her boy with both Robin and Rumple, and she could feel the magic of the close relationship he was developing with his grandfather, who was like a different person when he was teaching him to use his Gifts. The creepy disdainful man she'd met in Storybrooke what seemed like a lifetime ago was gone then, and the devotion he felt towards Henry scripted and shaped everything he did. Snow had been wrong; there was no safer place for Henry than with Rumpelstiltskin, because there was nothing the sorcerer wouldn't do for her son, and that feeling was quite obviously mutual. She hadn't seen this coming, but that was how things stood, and if she ever wanted to return to New York, she was almost sure she'd be going back alone.

"Going to see if I can catch a few fish," he told her, patting his horse's neck after he'd fed it a handful of oats. She nodded and observed him taking a line from his pocket, unravelling it as he walked down to the water's edge.

"How's the back?"

She hadn't heard Robin come up behind her and jumped, but she was getting used being caught off guard by the bowman. Turning in to his unexpected embrace, she stood up on her toes and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. His lips were soft, and he tasted earthy, of turf and sunlight, the pine shoots he sometimes chewed on, and birchbark.

"Better by the minute," she replied, sounding truthful enough.

"Good," he told her, rocking back on the balls of his feet with his arms wrapped firmly around her middle. "I was starting to worry."

"It's fine," she smiled, locking her gaze to his. Troubled though he was most days and nights with Roland on his heavy heart, stealing a fleeting, quiet moment with her like this seemed to ease his burdened mind and give him peace. The timing was _totally_ off, and she hadn't meant to, but she realized she was falling in love with him.

A little way off, the sorcerer picked up a small willow flute from out between the cinders and ashes of one of the fire pits. He squatted down on his heels and turned the small wooden whistle over in his hand, trying to feel into it and get a picture of the person who'd carved it.

"What's that?" Henry inquired, glancing over his shoulder, still busy disentangling his fishing line when he crouched down beside the older man. He was doing his best to ignore his mother's snogging session with Robin. He really liked the archer, but things were getting too intense there by the trees for his mind, making him feel a bit uncomfortable. It was funny to think of his mother being in love, and he wasn't jealous or missing out on a thing because of it, on the contrary, but this was all new and he'd have to get used to it.

"It's a willow flute," Rumple explained absently, rubbing the dirt off the mouthpiece with the pad of his thumb. "It might even still play." He put it to his lips and blew. It merely gave off some shrill, piercing sounds at first, but settled on somewhat more pleasant notes, and even a haunting little tune after a minute.

Rumple closed his eyes as he played the whistle Jefferson had made for Grace the night they'd met Jareth. He saw Roland's smiling face light up in the glow of the waning fire, when the girl passed the simple instrument on to him to try out. The five-year-old looked unharmed and fed, Rumple thought, a wagonload of worry and guilt tumbling from his shoulders. He watched the lad for a while as he tried to get some music from the flute but failed, and then lay back on the book he was using for a pillow: Henry's book. The two grown-ups next to the children at the fire were talking softly as Grace snuggled up to the boy, using her cloak to blanket them both, but Rumple had a hard time hearing them, because the girl clutching the flute was already half asleep. The last word the sorcerer caught from the man he recognized as Jefferson was _Gatekeeper_, and the superior, complacent look on Jareth's face upon hearing it gave Rumple the impression he hadn't been paying enough attention to the Hatter back in the day. That would now definitely have to change.

Half turning towards the tree line behind him with new insights, the sorcerer's gaze caught on Emma and Robin still locked in a kiss, and he calmly faced back to Henry, handed him the flute, and took the line from his hands to help him with the knots.

Between the two of them, they decided to go fishing a bit further downriver. On their way, they found an abandoned village huddled into a small beech grove and went exploring there before casting their lines. The simple huts and modest houses were generally in good shape, and only few of them had seen any amount of storm-, ogre-, or troll-damage over the past years; they were by and large as they had been left. Wash basins with their contents dried up and withered still sat on wooden porches, tables were set with untouched cutlery and plates, a half-finished cloth was still attached to the back strap loom in one of the hovels near the well, and there were barrels of shriveled vegetables and rotted fruit in a common cold storage. Henry was glad they'd get to spend the night indoors, in a real bed of old straw, but out of the cold.

When evening came, they had salmon and some of the mead they'd found in what had most probably been a beekeeper's cottage, properly seated at his table, and celebrated Rumple's good news.

XXXxxxXXX

Full moon. Belle stood at the window of her bedroom watching its pale face rise above the rooftops. Red put a hand on her shoulder and she turned to her for a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, while Whale deposited plastic packages of equipment for the peripheral IV and some fluids bags on the bed. It was likely that she'd be asleep again for a while, and this time, they'd be prepared.

Red fumbled with an envelope that was folded too many times over on itself, trying to smooth out the worst of the creases before handing it to her. "A letter for Granny," she said, and Belle pocketed it, glad that her friend had decided to write it.

She took the thick, black and white enchanted candle from the nightstand and tucked it into the seam of her jeans. Then, she put a match to each of the five tea lights around the sand dollar on the dresser, and looked at her own reflection in the mirror as Red turned off the lights and quietly left the room to wait downstairs with Victor and the guys until she'd drifted off. She knew the spell by heart, and when she lay down and closed her eyes, Storybrooke faded away.

XXXxxxXXX

The sorcerer opened the creaky door and looked around. No one had been here in a long, long time. The sturdy, solid half-timbered, oak-framed building with its clay and straw vaulting at the edge of the forest had been the common baking house of the settlement they'd stumbled across. In pre-curse days, the village people had fired up the massive stone oven every week and kneaded dough on the huge oak table in the center of the room, making enough to bake bread from it for their respective families to last them until the following week.

The house stood just off from the other cottages on the outskirts of the village to prevent flames from spreading if the chimney ever caught, but it never had, by the looks of it. The structure itself was old and dry, and even its small windows were still intact. He closed his eyes and imagined the aroma of the slowly browning loaves and rolls in the oven filling the air and wished he had some, regretting that he hadn't eaten much that day. He'd been anxious to be alone after dark; he wasn't sure whether she'd come or not, and he didn't want for anybody else's company in either case. If she did come, he'd be sure to tell the others in the morning, but if she didn't, there was no point. They all badly needed their sleep.

Finally, with the waning light of day, the full moon he'd been impatiently awaiting began to rise in pale shades of silver, peeking over the tree tops and ascending to the firmament. He settled down on the mud floor by the door, waiting for her. She'd told him she'd come if she could and if all went well in the World Without Magic, so these past weeks had been an endless anticipation of her return, however fleeting her stay might end up being. The duration of her presence in his world would depend on the crossing of their realities and the moonlight itself, because the sand dollar opened their connectedness to one another only under the same night sky, and it would do so only three more times, counting this one. Providing, indeed, that all went well.

He wondered how she'd been holding up, and if she'd been safe; how she'd managed, and how she'd look now, since, technically, more weeks had passed in Storybrooke than in the Enchanted World. Feeling that he was missing out on so much, he angled his legs, hugging them to his middle, and rested his head on his knees to get more comfortable. He tried to picture her with her baby bump. This was something he did every night before he went to sleep, whenever sleep managed to find him.

Just before he'd almost nodded off, halfway between asleep and awake, the sorcerer felt something stir; it was just a soft whisper in the hush of night and the silence of his dozing mind. He looked up, and there she was, standing in the pale moonshine that flooded the room.

"Belle," he breathed, getting to his feet and staring at her, trying to commit every detail of her smiling face and new, curvier appearance to his memory, in case she couldn't stay for long. She looked so good – life had obviously been treating her well. Belle mirrored his gaze as she crossed the floor to meet him, placing tender, loving hands on either side of his face, and kissed him fervently, tangling her fingers in his hair.

He responded to her and pulled her close, holding her by the shoulders, before running his hands down her sides, grasping her hips. They were more amply rounded than they had been, and he loved feeling her body against his own like this, ceaselessly amazed he could actually do so, and surprised at what that did to him at this moment.

His breath grew ragged as she shifted to deepen their kiss, tugging at his jacket. She pushed it over his shoulders and it dropped to the floor behind him, while he pulled her tank top up and helped her shed it, trailing kisses along her bare shoulder and neck as he unhooked her bra and slipped it off, caressing her breasts. She loosened his belt and untucked his shirt, slipped her hands underneath it and nestled against his chest, her lips and tongue searing on his receptive skin. Frantically, the sorcerer started looking for a place he could maneuver her to.

She used the lapse in his attention to rid him of his pants, sinking to her knees and nuzzling his inner thighs as she did so, a persistent, pleasurable pressure building and beginning to ache within her groin. Breathing in his scent was intoxicating by itself, but the taste of his arousal and the sound of his voice repeatedly moaning her name sent her spiraling towards pure, pulsating need.

Throbbing with anticipation and lacking an alternative, Rumple gently lifted her up in his arms and sat her on the huge table in the middle of the room, disturbing the thick covering of flour and dust. She lay back on it, and he peeled off her jeans and panties in one go before joining her. She relished the warmth of his touch as he stroked her thighs tenderly, his fingers and thumb soon tantalizing the smooth and most sensitive folds of her skin. The feel of his mouth on her sex made her gasp as he positioned himself between her legs and savored the warm, moist flavor of her longing.

Tracing exploratory kisses along her now conspicuously swollen belly and up towards her enlarged, tender breasts, he slowly moved on to the side of her neck and eagerly devoted his interest to her full lips. He'd missed her like a drowning man in the middle of the ocean missed the sand beneath his feet and the air to fill his lungs. She was his life, and making love to her was the heart of everything.

She could taste herself on him, as he slid one hand underneath her thigh and encouraged her to pull up her knees and tilt her hips back against the table top as far as she could, raising herself to him. He teased and lingered at her entrance, and she instinctively drew closer to him, her kisses growing ever more ravenous and urgent. She pressed firmly up against him when he finally pushed himself inside her very slowly and very intensely, filling her deliciously, and she let go of every other thought that may have brought her here tonight. Nothing else was important right now, and she began to move with him, following a rhythm that wasn't long in building her to the point of exploding lights everywhere within as she cried out.

Senselessness followed his own quiet release, and they remained still and lost in each other for a time before he carefully slid out of her, pushing up on his knees. Stiffly moving around her to encircle her protectively with his arms from behind, he sighed softly and kissed her neck as she nestled her back snugly in to his chest, spooning with him. He conjured a blanket to cover them as the night grew chilly, resting a gentle hand on her belly, where their baby lay and cradled them both under his arm.

Belle was afraid to drift off in his warm embrace, sated and safe as she was in this room with him. She had no idea where they were because the sea biscuit didn't bring her to any particular given place – it didn't matter in the least, though, because it brought her to _him, _wherever he was. She didn't want to go to sleep; time was way too precious, and this night remotely reminded her of the one they'd spent at his cabin. A small smile crept over her face at the thought that they'd definitely been more comfortable there in his bed than they were now on this big, old table. His steady breath on her neck and the feel of him lying with her, his thighs against her bottom, and the scent of their lovemaking suffused her totally, almost making her forget that he'd no longer be there if she fell asleep now and awoke back in Storybrooke. _Almost_.

Blinking away the drowsiness, she turned over in his arms and tenderly touched her palm to his cheek, kissing the corners of his mouth until he opened his eyes and returned her affections.

"I love you," he told her, kissing her. "I was afraid you mightn't be able to make it here tonight."

"I'll always find you," she replied. "I don't know how much longer I have this time, though."

He nodded, pushing back a floury strand of hair from her forehead, dreading the moment she'd have to leave him, and he'd be alone with his thoughts once again, as he had the first time. All he could do then was watch her fade away and pray that she'd be alright.

"I'll be fine, don't worry." she reassured him unexpectedly.

"What are you doing in my head, dearie?" he demanded amusedly, feeling her there within his mind. She was learning fast, he thought to himself, which she caught. He was going to have to get used to this. There would be no more keeping anything from her. It could be a curse or a blessing, he decided, and wondered if this could ever become troublesome to either one of them.

"Everything is going to be alright," she told him again, quirking an eyebrow. "It _can _be a blessing. Just think of all the trouble you'll spare yourself if I know what to prevent ahead of time…" Some dust got in her nose; it was everywhere, and it made her sneeze, much to his amusement. He was almost inclined to believe her, as he rid them of the flour with a chuckle and a seemingly effortless wave of his hand.

"We bound Ernmas," she gratefully went on explaining, supposing that she could have thought of doing that herself before it started itching. Moving particles was moving particles, whether they were very large or very small.

"The way we talked about it?" he asked, pulling her close, and she nodded, snuggling in to him.

"She won't be a problem for now. I don't know if I did this entirely right, but she's stuck in the portal and can't get out."

"Wow," he exclaimed. "Then you probably did _everything_ right. Did you remember the spell, or did you use the moonstones?"

"Both, actually, just to be sure," she confessed, blushing.

"Really, dearie?" he smiled, taking great satisfaction in this new imagery of her he'd be carrying with him on his way in the coming weeks. He'd already been aware of the fact that she could take care of herself, but he'd always been afraid for her. Perhaps he'd given her too little credit. He kissed the top of her head, and then shifted to find her mouth once again.

She was gone, when he awoke. The candle he'd asked her to bring lay beside him on the table, along with a letter for Granny and another envelope with his name on it. The dagger he'd brought for her was gone from the lining of his coat.

He opened the envelope that she'd left for him and took out the black and white ultrasound pictures of his child.

**OOOoooOOO**

**Thank you to everyone who's favoriting and following, and especially to my great reviewers for feedback and encouragement: Grace5231973, cynicsquest, CJ Moliere and Twyla Mercedes**

**cynicsquest is still beta-ing, which means she's still not tired of my endless repetitions, harrowing misspellings and babbling run-on sentences, plot bunnies gone wild and dragons breathing fire on my attempts to rope them in. I really don't know what I'd do without you, dearie.**

**And in case you're wondering: yes, the love scene at the common baking house is actually based on the one (missing) from Marylin Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing… I love that film.**


	7. As The Crow Flies (T-rated)

**This is the censored version of chapter 6, suited to a T-rating. It contains everything the other one does, minus the explicit Rumbelle scene.**

6. As The Crow Flies (T)

Rumpelstiltskin pushed back the rug on the floor beside his bed, and pictured the floorboard he'd hidden the Dark One's dagger beneath coming loose. The cracks in the oak parquette darkened and became more prominent, revealing the right one that soon began setting itself off from the others. He envisioned it sliding back, and it did, exposing the long beige leather sheath with the straight, inconspicuous black hilt protruding from the opening at the top.

He reached in and retrieved it, pulling the meandered blade from its worn scabbard until he could see the intricately woven patterns that had once framed his name on the steel surface. It was still smeared with Belle's blood, but the ornate lettering that had been etched into the metal was gone without replacement, leaving him with no clue of what was to follow. He knew little more of the curse's history beyond the specific ramifications that had been implanted within his memory when he'd killed Zoso for it, but there was, in all probability, more. There had to be, or this situation wouldn't have occurred.

He closed the floorboard, replaced the rug, and set about cleaning the dagger carefully with the damp rag he'd brought up with him. It wouldn't do to give it back to Belle in this state. She'd asked for it, and he couldn't think of a better or more remote place for it right now than Storybrooke. Just what she intended to do with it was beyond him, but he had no reason to question or refuse her. Handing over that dagger meant trust, and if she still trusted him, even after he had failed her again so completely, then he would give that trust right back to her. It was the very least, and, at the same time, the most he could do for her from here.

"Are you coming?" Henry asked, startling him. The sorcerer didn't know how long his grandson had been watching him from the doorway, but he smiled up at him and nodded.

"Are the horses ready?" he inquired, sliding the dagger back into its sheath.

"All saddled," the boy returned, eyes fixed on the black hilt for a moment too long. Rumple had taken note of the expression on the his face. The fascination that emanated from this dark object was consuming, and even Henry could feel its pull. The moment was there and gone in a second, and to his relief, Rumple presently ascertained that the boy was itching to go. He'd hardly been off the castle grounds in all the weeks he'd been here, and it was obvious that he was excited to see the world his ancestors had been born to. He had reason to be. It was both beautiful and horrible, kind and vicious, providing and taxing.

He remembered the better years of his youth, when he'd been around Henry's age and living with the spinsters. There was something to be said for the internet and microwave ovens, but the freedom and natural magic of the Enchanted Forest was beyond anything the World Without Magic had to offer. There were ogres, trolls and wolves in those woods, and it was a dangerous place to be if you were alone, but there were also unicorns and enchanted waterfalls, floating mountains, dragons and overgrown paths to hidden towers. The treasures of this world were not weighed in gold and silver – security bonds, real estate, insurance or dollars and cents ; they were the intensity of life as it could never be in a place where clocks, traffic lights, bus schedules and higher education determined and regulated a teenager's actions. Henry's perception and self-awareness would never be the same again, Rumple thought. No, having this would be much richer and more rewarding than getting an A in English or playing a video game after supper, applying for some college stipendium in a few years and living out his days watching his cholesterol and blood-pressure rise with every senseless divorce court battle he fought or hopeless patient he lost. He might never go to college or take his girlfriend to the movies, but he would one day be a powerful sorcerer and rule over an entire kingdom of wonders.

Rumpelstiltskin tucked the dagger into his belt, shouldered a backpack with the things he'd be taking along, and picked up Belle's dragon-slough cloak from the bed, where he'd tossed it earlier. He took a moment to gather himself, when the memories connected with the feel of the soft fabric in his hand hit him, but then turned to his grandson and held it out to him.

"It might be a bit big yet, but you'll grow into it… and I'm sure that it'll grow on you," he told the boy.

Henry's face mirrored his bewilderment. He was completely cognizant of the quality, importance and meaning of the gift he was being offered, and wasn't entirely certain if he could accept it. He knew how significant and personally valuable Belle's cape was to his grandfather, but Rumple insistently stood his ground and gave him a small assuring nod. The soft brown eyes fixed to his own told of deep-lying hurt and darkness beneath the surface, but they also spoke of hope, profoundly heartfelt kindness and caring towards him. Accepting the gift for the love it represented, he set down his own travelling bag and took it. It was breathtakingly superb to look at and felt lighter than he'd ever imagined a piece of clothing to be. Spontaneously, but awkwardly, he embraced the older man, and mumbled his thanks.

Taking a last wistful look around the room as Henry set off down the corridor, the sorcerer closed the door behind himself quietly.

XXXxxxXXX

Youtube, Twitter and fanfiction – what more could she ask for? Red was back online. With Ernmas gone and Belle doing her thing, they had their old Storybrooke back. Not that anyone was willing to try and cross the town line just yet, but cable TV and broadband connectivity were back, and the phones were working again.

She hadn't left the fan-site of the fairy-tale based show she'd been following before the crap had hit the fan in winter all night long, catching up with the AU-craziness and smut her followed and favorited authors had been posting in her absence. It was all Belle could do to get her friend to come to a belated brunch in the kitchen of Gabriel Gold's – her – house. They had been celebrating there with a big dinner that had all the fixings the previous evening, and empty bottles of wine and foil wrappers, dirty dishes and glasses still cluttered the sink because she'd forgotten to start the dishwasher, but she'd cleared and wiped the table, and there was food, juice and coffee on it. The radio was playing.

Red seated herself, yawned, and stretched sinuously, as Belle poured her a cup. She took it in both hands and relished the comforting warmth and aroma.

"Wonderful," she said. "Thank you."

"So, how's the Oncers community been holding up without your reviews?" Belle smirked, putting down the coffee pot and sitting opposite her. "Anyone miss you?"

"Aw, hell yah!" Red exclaimed, taking a sip of the hot brew. "The girl I was betaing for all but gave up. With all that's been going on here, I might just publish a little something myself sometime."

She reached for the French Bread, crispy on the outside, fluffy and soft inside – courtesy of Jeffrey, who now had time to bake again, as he had done at the local bakery before the second curse, and before Ernmas had forced the dwarves down into the mines. Cutting off some of the baguette for herself and for Belle, she considered the egg salad, but decided on the marmalade instead for starters.

Belle took her piece and spread some cream cheese on it. "They'd think you're out of your mind, but the stats would go off the chart."

XXXxxxXXX

They were making good progress on the first length of their journey, but the days were long for Henry and Emma, who were unused to sitting in a saddle for hours at a time, and had difficulty sleeping out in the open. Emma awoke stiff and aching most mornings, and Henry had needed Rumple to heal a sore or two in delicate places. However, they were learning by doing, and, all things considered, the sorcerer thought they were getting the hang of it by the time they reached a wide river bank that had obviously seen a lot of travelers recently.

There were blackened fire-pits on the cobble beach, and trees had been felled for their wood on the edge of the greening forest. They dismounted and had a look around. The sorcerer knew that, sometimes, the things left behind by the weary told their story if you just listened intently enough, and he set about picking around the rocky strand meticulously, searching for something that might have a tale for them. Emma and Henry tended to the horses, while Robin went back into the woods to set a few traps that would catch them supper.

"Do you think it's still far?" Henry asked his mother, setting a saddlebag down at his feet.

She shrugged, rubbing her back, which was giving her a lot of trouble. She had a hard time straightening. "Your grandfather said something about a few weeks, so I guess we may be getting close." At least she hoped so, her look said, as she lugged her saddle to the ground. If she was very honest, she was losing track of time. They had seen so many things that had filled her heart and her head since they'd left the castle that she was starting to jumble them; travelling this world on horseback with a sorcerer and Robin Hood was like living in a beautiful dream. If only the reason for this wasn't Roland…

One of the most impressive things they'd come across so far was a large herd of black unicorns on the open range. She'd watched the magnificent creatures grazing on the new grass of a seemingly endless meadow, but they had been scattered like leaves on the wind by Anams shadow as he'd passed overhead, carrying her son.

Henry could hardly get enough of Anam. He'd asked to ride him several times, and, to him, there was nothing to compare with the thrill he got from that. Looking at that herd of unicorns racing across the fields from above, the wind in his hair and the warm, fire-breathing winterdragon beneath him, he felt every bit the prince his grandparents kept telling him he was. There was nothing remotely royal about him, he thought – not in the sense that he would know how to dance, bow or fence, like those prats from the Disney movies he'd seen, but he was learning to shoot a straight arrow from Robin, and his grandfather was teaching him to use the sword David had given him for a present when they'd left. He was practicing his magic and getting better by the day, and he was _riding a dragon_.

Emma was so proud of her son. It was exciting and scary at the same time to see the way he was embracing this place and the new things he was learning here. She was seeing a side to him that she knew _never_ would have emerged in New York. They'd had a good life there, but even though she was hurting all over, and there wasn't a decent bathroom or deli anywhere in the land, she was beginning to sense that their life might be good here, too. The mission they were on didn't seem like one at all, so far. It was more like they were taking a long sight-seeing trip right now in great haste, all the while trying to catch up with Roland's abductor and worrying that time was getting away from them with every hour they needed to rest themselves and the horses. She wasn't so naïve to believe that the, relatively speaking, agreeable and harmless part of this trip would remain so for much longer, but there was so much good in it for Henry and her all the same.

She loved watching her boy with both Robin and Rumple, and she could feel the magic of the close relationship he was developing with his grandfather, who was like a different person when he was teaching him to use his Gifts. The creepy disdainful man she'd met in Storybrooke what seemed like a lifetime ago was gone then, and the devotion he felt towards Henry scripted and shaped everything he did. Snow had been wrong; there was no safer place for Henry than with Rumpelstiltskin, because there was nothing the sorcerer wouldn't do for her son, and that feeling was quite obviously mutual. She hadn't seen this coming, but that was how things stood, and if she ever wanted to return to New York, she was almost sure she'd be going back alone.

"Going to see if I can catch a few fish," he told her, patting his horse's neck after he'd fed it a handful of oats. She nodded and observed him taking a line from his pocket, unravelling it as he walked down to the water's edge.

"How's the back?"

She hadn't heard Robin come up behind her and jumped, but she was getting used being caught off guard by the bowman. Turning in to his unexpected embrace, she stood up on her toes and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. His lips were soft, and he tasted earthy, of turf and sunlight, the pine shoots he sometimes chewed on, and birchbark.

"Better by the minute," she replied, sounding truthful enough.

"Good," he told her, rocking back on the balls of his feet, his arms wrapped firmly around her middle. "I was starting to worry."

"It's fine," she smiled, locking her gaze to his. Troubled though he was most days and nights with Roland on his heavy heart, stealing a fleeting, quiet moment with her like this seemed to ease his burdened mind and give him peace. The timing was _totally_ off, and she hadn't meant to, but she realized she was falling in love with him.

A little way off, the sorcerer picked up a small willow flute from out between the cinders and ashes of one of the fire pits. He squatted down on his heels and turned the small wooden whistle over in his hand, trying to feel into it and get a picture of the person who'd carved it.

"What's that?" Henry inquired, glancing over his shoulder, still busy disentangling his fishing line when he crouched down beside the older man. He was doing his best to ignore his mother's snogging session with Robin. He really liked the archer, but things were getting too intense there by the trees for his mind, making him feel a bit uncomfortable. It was funny to think of his mother being in love, and he wasn't jealous or missing out on a thing because of it, on the contrary, but this was all new and he'd have to get used to it.

"It's a willow flute," Rumple explained absently, rubbing the dirt off the mouthpiece with the pad of his thumb. "It might even still play." He put it to his lips and blew. It merely gave off some shrill, piercing sounds at first, but settled on somewhat more pleasant notes, and even a haunting little tune after a minute.

Rumple closed his eyes as he played the whistle Jefferson had made for Grace the night they'd met Jareth. He saw Roland's smiling face light up in the glow of the waning fire, when the girl passed the simple instrument on to him to try out. The five-year-old looked unharmed and fed, Rumple thought, a wagonload of worry and guilt tumbling from his shoulders. He watched the lad for a while as he tried to get some music from the flute but failed, and then lay back on the book he was using for a pillow: Henry's book. The two grown-ups next to the children at the fire were talking softly as Grace snuggled up to the boy, using her cloak to blanket them both, but Rumple had a hard time hearing them, because the girl clutching the flute was already half asleep. The last word the sorcerer caught from the man he recognized as Jefferson was _Gatekeeper_, and the superior, complacent look on Jareth's face upon hearing it gave Rumple the impression he hadn't been paying enough attention to the Hatter back in the day. That would now definitely have to change.

Half turning towards the tree line behind him with new insights, the sorcerer's gaze caught on Emma and Robin still locked in a kiss, and he calmly faced back to Henry, handed him the flute, and took the line from his hands to help him with the knots.

Between the two of them, they decided to go fishing a bit further downriver. On their way, they found an abandoned village huddled into a small beech grove and went exploring there before casting their lines. The simple huts and modest houses were generally in good shape, and only few of them had seen any amount of storm-, ogre-, or troll-damage over the past years; they were by and large as they had been left. Wash basins with their contents dried up and withered still sat on wooden porches, tables were set with untouched cutlery and plates, a half-finished cloth was still attached to the back strap loom in one of the hovels near the well, and there were barrels of shriveled vegetables and rotted fruit in a common cold storage. Henry was glad they'd get to spend the night indoors, in a real bed of old straw, but out of the cold.

When evening came, they had salmon and some of the mead they'd found in what had most probably been a beekeeper's cottage, properly seated at his table, and celebrated Rumple's good news.

XXXxxxXXX

Full moon. Belle stood at the window of her bedroom watching its pale face rise above the rooftops. Red put a hand on her shoulder and she turned to her for a quick hug and a peck on the cheek, while Whale deposited plastic packages of equipment for the peripheral IV and some fluids bags on the bed. It was likely that she'd be asleep again for a while, and this time, they'd be prepared.

Red fumbled with an envelope that was folded too many times over on itself, trying to smooth out the worst of the creases before handing it to her. "A letter for Granny," she said, and Belle pocketed it, glad that her friend had decided to write it.

She took the thick, black and white enchanted candle from the nightstand and tucked it into the seam of her jeans. Then, she put a match to each of the five tea lights around the sand dollar on the dresser, and looked at her own reflection in the mirror as Red turned off the lights and quietly left the room to wait downstairs with Victor and the guys until she'd drifted off. She knew the spell by heart, and when she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, Storybrooke faded away.

XXXxxxXXX

The sorcerer opened the creaky door and looked around. No one had been here in a long, long time. The sturdy, solid half-timbered, oak-framed building with its clay and straw vaulting at the edge of the forest had been the common baking house of the settlement they'd stumbled across. In pre-curse days, the village people had fired up the massive stone oven every week and kneaded dough on the huge oak table in the center of the room, making enough to bake bread from it for their respective families to last them until the following week.

The house stood just off from the other cottages on the outskirts of the village to prevent flames from spreading if the chimney ever caught, but it never had, by the looks of it. The structure itself was old and dry, and even its small windows were still intact. He closed his eyes and imagined the aroma of the slowly browning loaves and rolls in the oven filling the air and wished he had some, regretting that he hadn't eaten much that day. He'd been anxious to be alone after dark; he wasn't sure whether she'd come or not, and he didn't want for anybody else's company in either case. If she did come, he'd be sure to tell the others in the morning, but if she didn't, there was no point. They all badly needed their sleep.

Finally, with the waning light of day, the full moon he'd been impatiently awaiting began to rise in pale shades of silver, peeking over the tree tops and ascending to the firmament. He settled down on the mud floor by the door, waiting for her. She'd told him she'd come if she could and if all went well in the World Without Magic, so these past weeks had been an endless anticipation of her return, however fleeting her stay might end up being. The duration of her presence in his world would depend on the crossing of their realities and the moonlight itself, because the sand dollar opened their connectedness to one another only under the same night sky, and it would do so only three more times, counting this one. Providing, indeed, that all went well.

He wondered how she'd been holding up, and if she'd been safe; how she'd managed, and how she'd look now, since, technically, more weeks had passed in Storybrooke than in the Enchanted World. Feeling that he was missing out on so much, he angled his legs, hugging them to his middle, and rested his head on his knees to get more comfortable. He tried to picture her with her baby bump. This was something he did every night before he went to sleep, whenever sleep managed to find him.

Just before he'd almost nodded off, halfway between asleep and awake, the sorcerer felt something stir; it was just a soft whisper in the hush of night and the silence of his dozing mind. He looked up, and there she was, standing in the pale moonshine that flooded the room.

"Belle," he breathed, getting to his feet and staring at her, trying to commit every detail of her smiling face and new, curvier appearance to his memory, in case she couldn't stay for long. She looked so good – life had obviously been treating her well. Belle mirrored his gaze as she crossed the floor to meet him, placing tender, loving hands on either side of his face, and kissed him fervently, tangling her fingers in his hair.

He responded to her and pulled her close, holding her by the shoulders, before running his hands down her sides, grasping her hips. They were more amply rounded than they had been, and he loved feeling her body against his own like this, ceaselessly amazed he could actually do so, and surprised at what that did to him at this moment.

His breath grew ragged as she shifted to deepen their kiss, tugging at his jacket. She pushed it over his shoulders and it dropped to the floor behind him, while he pulled her tank top up and helped her shed it, trailing kisses along her bare shoulder and neck. This was their time, whatever precious minutes or hours they'd be granted, and they used it to make love on the big old, oak table, slowly.

Belle was afraid to drift off in his warm embrace, sated and safe as she was in this room with him afterwards. She had no idea where they were because the sea biscuit didn't bring her to any particular given place – it didn't matter in the least, though, because it brought her to _him, _wherever he was. She didn't want to go to sleep; time was way too precious, and this night remotely reminded her of the one they'd spent at his cabin. A small smile crept over her face at the thought that they'd definitely been more comfortable there in his bed than they were now on this dusty, old table. His steady breath on her neck and the feel of his chest against her back, his thighs against her bottom and the scent of their togetherness suffused her totally, almost making her forget that he'd no longer be there if she fell asleep now and awoke back in Storybrooke. _Almost_.

Blinking away the drowsiness, she turned over in his arms and tenderly touched her palm to his cheek, kissing the corners of his mouth until he opened his eyes and returned her affections.

"I love you," he told her, kissing her. "I was afraid you mightn't make it tonight."

"I'll always find you," she replied. "I don't know how much longer I have this time, though."

He nodded, pushing back a floury strand of hair from her forehead, dreading the moment she'd have to leave him, and he'd be alone with his thoughts once again, as he had the first time. All he could do then was watch her fade away and pray that she'd be alright.

"I'll be fine, don't worry." she reassured him unexpectedly.

"What are you doing in my head, dearie?" he demanded amusedly, feeling her there within his mind. She was learning fast, he thought to himself, which she caught. He was going to have to get used to this. There would be no more keeping anything from her. It could be a curse or a blessing, he decided, and wondered if this could ever become troublesome to either one of them.

"Everything is going to be alright," she told him again, quirking an eyebrow. "It _can _be a blessing. Just think of all the trouble you'll spare yourself if I know what to prevent ahead of time…" Some flour dust got in her nose; it was everywhere, and it made her sneeze, much to his amusement. He was almost inclined to believe her, as he rid them of it with a chuckle and a seemingly effortless wave of his hand.

"We bound Ernmas," she gratefully went on explaining, supposing that she could have thought of doing that herself before it started itching. Moving particles was moving particles, whether they were very large or very small.

"The way we talked about it?" he asked, pulling her close, and she nodded, snuggling in to him.

"She won't be a problem for now. I don't know if I did this entirely right, but she's stuck in the portal and can't get out."

"Wow," he exclaimed. "Then you probably did _everything_ right. Did you remember the spell, or did you use the moonstones?"

"Both, actually, just to be sure," she confessed, blushing.

"Really, dearie?" he smiled, taking great satisfaction in this new imagery of her he'd be carrying with him on his way in the coming weeks. He'd already been aware of the fact that she could take care of herself, but he'd always been afraid for her. Perhaps he'd given her too little credit. He kissed the top of her head, and then shifted to find her mouth once again.

She was gone, when he awoke. The candle he'd asked her to bring lay beside him on the table, along with a letter for Granny and another envelope with his name on it. The dagger he'd brought for her was gone from the lining of his coat.

He opened the envelope that she'd left for him and took out the black and white ultrasound pictures of his child.

**OOOoooOOO**

**Thank you to everyone who's favoriting and following, and especially to my great reviewers for feedback and encouragement: Grace5231973, cynicsquest, CJ Moliere and Twyla Mercedes **

**cynicsquest is still beta-ing, which means she's still not tired of my endless repetitions, harrowing misspellings and babbling run-on sentences, plot bunnies gone wild and dragons breathing fire on my attempts to rope them in. I really don't know what I'd do without you, dearie.**

**And in case you're wondering: yes, the (censored) love scene at the common baking house is actually based on the one (missing) from Marylin Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing… I love that film.**


	8. Return Of The Wolves

7. Return Of The Wolves

Jefferson was sure the citadel couldn't be far now; he heard the toll of the bell more clearly with every step that took them closer to it. It had bothered him at first, mostly because it was there, echoing in his head_ all the time_. There was no getting away from it even in sleep, and it made him slow and irritable during the daytime. After a while, however, he'd come to realize that there was more to it. It triggered recollections in him that weren't quite his own. _The Calling_ drew him not only nearer to the Ice Palace, but it eased useful bits of knowledge into his mind that would serve him well as they eventually drifted within reach. He was getting images and flashbacks whenever he closed his eyes now, and they took him inside the place they were heading for, though he'd never so much as come within a hundred miles of here. He began seeing connections that he'd missed on all his travels, and things that had been so abstract started aligning with the new insights he got. There was a deeply rooted yearning inside of him - a longing to be where he'd been destined to go since the day he was born, and he no longer perceived the vibrant peal of the fortress bell as an intrusion on his sanity. It reminded him that he was going home.

Emerging from a sparse pine forest that had been thinning out for some miles behind them, he and Jareth found themselves faced with an impervious bank of damp, rolling fog. The Hatter reached out to grasp his daughter's hand for fear of losing her in the mist. He could hardly make out the ground at his feet, and he saw nothing ahead beyond his outstretched arm. The eerie white haze seemed to silence the world around them completely, and it swallowed even the sound of their own breathing. Jefferson felt Grace's fear through his contact with her.

"Papa?" she wailed.

"It's alright," he replied quietly as he leaned down to her and cupped her cheek with his palm, planting a light kiss on the other. "Don't be afraid. Just stay with me."

Raising his head and squinting into the strangely illuminated, yet blinding ambient, he had a hard time locating the Goblin King, though he couldn't have gotten very far yet. "Is there a way around this?" he called out.

Jareth didn't even slow his pace with Roland scuttling in his wake, much less stop and turn around to answer the Hatter's question. Jefferson was just able to occasionally glimpse the back of the dark green jacket the boy was wearing, and he had but the vaguest notion of the other man walking ahead of the lad, though perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him, and what he was actually seeing was only a disturbance in the water particles. For a moment, he felt panic rising in him – what had he gotten himself and his daughter into?

They'd left the group he and Grace had been travelling with in favor of joining Jareth, and he hadn't regretted it. Not up until now. Jareth wasn't exactly a great conversationalist, nor pleasant to be with in general, but Jefferson wasn't in this to make friends, and the Goblin King did seem to have an uncanny knack for steering them around danger or repelling it by some means or other when it became unavoidable. Thanks to their strange companion, they had always managed to escape injury or death, find easier paths and passageways, crossings and bridges, and they'd never even gone hungry, while others had perished in the bogs, been hauled off by ogres or gotten themselves drowned in the treacherous rapids of the rivers that were now rising with meltwater. Even the unnaturally large and vicious wolves with the ghostly eyes they'd encountered time and again along their way tended to seek their meals elsewhere when they became aware of Jareth's presence; they would catch the scent of the creature that dwelled within him and flee.

The Goblin King certainly had something deeply disturbing about him, but Jefferson could usually live with that quite well, since he was grateful for the safe passage this fact had served to guarantee them. Until now. Apparently, Jareth was having an exceptionally annoying day today, though, and just when Jefferson thought he'd abandoned them after all, the other man chose to reply.

"Not that _I_ know of," he revealed, sounding amused at the Hatter's irritation. There was a permanently smug haughtiness in his voice that simply unnerved Jefferson. "Do keep up," he added sternly, trailing off in the distance.

Jefferson didn't feel the need to hide his contempt as long as the fog was doing it for him, and his eyes narrowed when he sincerely wished some crippling disease upon the Goblin King. Nonetheless, he hastened his stride, pulling Grace with him.

"Watch your step, sire," he yelled. "You never know what lies to the fore."

XXXxxxXXX

"It keeps getting louder," Henry told his grandfather. "That sound in my ears, I mean."

"Don't worry about it," the sorcerer replied, pulling on his boots. He'd spent the remainder of the night at the baking house, staring at the fuzzy images of his child on the furling, photo-sized pictures his wife had left him. Each smooth, glossy little sheet had a date on it, and the most recent ones lay in the future, observing them this world's calendar. It was well into summer in Storybrooke, and the next time he'd see her it would be in fall there, just before the baby was due, if their calculations were right.

Henry had woken alone in the beekeeper's cottage before dawn and decided to go see where everybody was. He hadn't been able to locate his mother and Robin yet, but since that didn't seem very surprising to him, Rumple had seen no reason to pursue the issue. They'd not be far, he thought, and they'd known he wasn't either.

The noises in his grandson's ears didn't worry the sorcerer too much because he was hearing them too, so that proved the boy wasn't ill – unless this was some very curious bug. At first, he'd assumed that having magic was the common denominator, but he'd ruled that out soon enough after asking Emma outright and getting a puzzled look for it, paired with a smart comment in her usual fashion. He'd sent Messenger to the castle with a note some days ago and was still waiting to hear back from Mrs. Winslett on that particular matter, as well as David on another, equally important one.

His coat had gotten dusty on the mud floor, and he began brushing it off, when Henry spotted the pictures lying on the table, next to the enchanted candle and a letter addressed to Granny. His mouth flew open, and his brow crinkled.

"She was here, wasn't she?" he inquired, and the sorcerer nodded offhandedly. "Is she alright?"

Again, the sorcerer nodded, smiling this time, and thinking back at the very first glimpse he'd caught of her in the moonlit window. "She looked great." She really had looked quite wonderful – like she'd been eating well, sleeping well and generally been taking good care of herself and their baby. He pulled on his coat and tucked the candle and the letter into the inner pocket, motioning Henry that it was alright for him to look at the pictures, and the boy did.

"So, this is my uncle," Henry mumbled, shuffling through them.

His comment prompted Rumple to ask himself whether this was just pure speculation or some deeper knowledge on the boy's behalf. "It could be your _aunt_," he retorted, gazing intently over his grandson's shoulder at the particular picture he was holding up. "I honestly can't tell."

Henry grinned up at him, and Rumple reflected that he might have thought to ask Belle whether she already knew or not. Not that it was important to him whether she was giving birth to a boy or a girl, but this had sparked his curiosity. He'd gladly and gratefully raise either, if only he'd only get to raise his child_ at all_. He'd give anything to. Remembering Bae's baby-years, he was sure they'd been some of the best of his life. Even after Milah had left them, there had been really great times when he'd thought that life simply couldn't get much more perfect.

They'd have to bring about the solution to their problem soon, or Belle would be having their child alone. She could and she would, he was certain, though to his mind, she shouldn't have to. Her ideas about unraveling their mystery were plausible, and he was almost ready to follow her anywhere where they could be together… _almost_. There were just a few things he had to take care of here within a very tight time-budget yet, but, in the end, he now knew where his journey was going – and that was always back to her.

"Come on," he told the boy as he opened the door, "let's get your lesson in before breakfast." He glanced outside and instantly closed it again when he saw what was going on, eyes wide and heart racing. Molding his back heavily to the wooden panel, he took a deep breath. Timberwolves: huge, black and vicious.

"What is it?" Henry asked, alarmed by his grandfather's unsettling behavior. "What's out there?"

The sorcerer motioned him to be silent with a deprecating gesture of his hand, taking a second to kick start his brain. He gratefully noted that Henry had thought to wear Belle's cloak to warm him against the chilly morning air before he'd left the beekeeper's cottage. It would have to fulfil the other of its intended purposes just as well today.

Rumple was troubled by the fact that the wolves in the pack out there were so numerous… There were just too many of them to deal with individually – he estimated over fifty animals from what he'd glimpsed in the second he'd opened that door. He'd have to divert them in some way, cast a masking spell for himself, and then find Emma and Robin, if they were still alive, while he got the boy out of harm's way, _very quickly, and very quietly_. If he could, he'd pick off the alpha pair inconspicuously somehow, provided he could locate it, and cause some confusion while he was at it: that might split the ranks and buy them some time.

"There are wolves out there. They are very, very big and extremely ugly, and it's the kind that serve Morrigan," he told Henry, whose blank face was unsettlingly lacking the appropriate amount of reverent fear at this statement. It confirmed to the sorcerer that the meaning adjectives such as _big_ and _ugly_ could take on, when placed in direct context with the nasty supernatural beings Morrigan had an affinity for, had not yet been sufficiently impressed upon the boy.

"So?" Henry began, "We can get rid of them…" His voice trailed off when he became aware of the severe look this suggestion was getting him from the older man.

Rumple thought that the horses would be dead by now, most likely, which was extremely inconvenient in this particular situation and moment, aside from slowing things down for them significantly from here on in. He closed his eyes briefly and called to Anam. Getting the boy up into the air was smarter in any case. A wolf of this size and motivation might outrun and bring down one of their well-seasoned mounts. The dragon would take the boy to safety and come back for him when he'd found the others.

"_We_ are not doing _anything_," the sorcerer continued in clipped tones, forcing his grandson to look at him by grasping his shoulder firmly with one hand and his chin with the other. It was imperative that he get him to do as he was told just this one time. "It's too dangerous. You're not ready yet," he explained not much above a whisper, raising Henry's hood to make sure the boy was hidden from sight. "I'm going to count to three, and then I'll open this door," he went on. "When I do, I want you to walk very slowly and very quietly to the riverbank. Don't look left, don't look right, and _walk_, don't _run_. Anam will be waiting for you there."

"What about Mom and Robin?" Henry asked back.

Rumple could hear the welling indignation in his throaty voice quite clearly, but chose to ignore it.

"I'm not leaving without them!" Henry informed him decisively before he could even think how to respond. The young prince had no intention of walking or running anywhere, and deftly twisted out of the sorcerer's grip.

"_You will obey me_," Rumple insisted then, stiffening and toning down dangerously low as he span around, scanning the room for some wavering movement, any stir in the air. There was none. "Let me worry about your mother and Robin," he added more softly. "I _will_ find them."

Henry didn't answer him, and the sorcerer knew he could be anywhere. They didn't have time for games, so he concentrated and let his mind roam out, but he hit solid walls wherever he tried to feel for the boy's signature. For the first time since Henry had arrived in the Enchanted World, Rumpelstiltskin was angry at him, _really_ angry, because that's what fear for the people he was close to prompted in him.

Generally speaking, he loved that his grandson was headstrong and had a mind of his own. He enjoyed the way the lad could pick holes in arguments and debate on circumstances that seemed beyond question even in this world, but Henry didn't have the slightest idea of the factual fragility of life out here. Everything about this trip had been an adventure to him, so far.

They'd been underway only a few weeks and hadn't really encountered the kind of monstrosity that lurked outside that door yet. Natural, normal-sized wolves were as indigenous to these woods as trolls and flowersprites, but they'd always avoid and run from any human rather than risk trouble for the pack at this time of the year, when they had pups to provide for.

These wolves were different, though, because they didn't behave as your ordinary run-of-the-mill canines would. He hadn't seen one of them since he'd had his run-in with Morrigan at the portal in the mines, but he was sure they were the same breed. And, they were definitely searching for something, he decided, as he observed two of them through the window across from him. They were sniffing at a barrel right beside the house, and there was nothing but a thin pane of glass between them and his grandson. Searching for_ something _or_ someone, _he thought_. Perhaps them._ His intuition told him that Raven's wards had failed, and Morrigan was free: the hunt was back on.

His only concern now was getting the boy out of here alive. This special variety of evil miscreation with its ferocious blazing green eyes and razor sharp claws could take a lad of Henry's stature apart with one blow of its paw.

He lowered his gaze and considered his options. Since his grandson had been clever enough to put up a protection that would prevent him from physically dragging him out of here and whipping his butt, he decided there was only one other thing he could do. Mumbling the first lines of a containment spell, he pictured the house sealing itself off – with Henry inside it – as he opened the door and stepped outside. Once there, he instantly began flinging a furious burst of fireballs at the wolves that caught whiff of him and began closing in, snarling and snapping, jumping at him, often getting too close for comfort. He had to leave the proximity of the house, though reluctantly, and assume different positions throughout the village, as his mind began examining the huts and hovels for a sign of Emma and Robin. Nothing but ruins, smoke and ashes would be left of this settlement when he was done, he thought, rage pulsing through his veins as he observed the first thatched roof that caught fire.

He made sure to keep an eye on the baking house, but to his dismay, it didn't take Henry long to undo his spell. Rumpelstiltskin hadn't expected anything different. From where he was standing by the beekeeper's cottage, he could see the boy taking down his hood up on the gable of the backing house, looking as though he was assessing the situation below.

Anam circled overhead, but there was no way the dragon could get a clear shot at the wolves below through the trees without endangering Henry or him. The most he could do for them was dip down and snatch one of the beasts that was drawing in on Rumple to carry it away, snap its spine and drop it some way off. He'd return and repeat this strategy several times, while the sorcerer was trying to decide where best to pop up next to take out as many of them as he could in one go.

Since Rumple wasn't constantly paying attention to Henry, a wolf that had used the barrel behind the backing house for a stepping ladder and somehow managed to scale the roof escaped his notice. It made its way towards the boy, cautiously slinking along the crest. Rumple only caught the beast's movement from the corner of his eye when it had almost reached Henry, and he got a horrible flash of the creature ripping his grandson's throat out.

Henry reacted before Rumple could even think to raise a hand or cry out to him. The young magician froze every last one of the timberwolves in the entire village, and the monster that was attacking him was suspended in mid-leap, mere inches from his face. The sorcerer's eyes grew wide as Henry drew himself up to his full height on the rooftop and turned to grin down at him. _Did he just delay time…?_ was the first thought that entered the sorcerer's mind_._

"I missed the last part of what you were saying about me not being ready for this," the boy called, while Rumple wondered why his own limbs were still responding to him, if Henry was indeed stalling time – but then it dawned on him that this wasn't at all what Henry had chosen to do in order to save himself. He'd cast a different enchantment altogether, and considering this made his ears ring for a minute as he looked about at all the teeth bared at him so furiously. His breath hitched, and he was aware of his heart pounding in his rib cage.

Emma and Robin came running out of the woods towards them then, shock and horror poignantly visible on their faces. The sorcerer glanced up and saw clouds passing swiftly overhead. Birds soared across the sky, and he heard the gush of the river above the sound of the wind moving in the trees. Rumple wiped the clingy film of sweat off his face with the palm of his hand and ascertained that Henry had managed to separate planes, and that it was, in effect, only the wolves that were immobilized. No telling for how long, but the boy had stopped _all of_ them. One, two, or perhaps even three living, breathing beings he could have digested – but _all of them_ was beyond what the sorcerer could have accomplished himself, and he got the distinct feeling that there wasn't much left he could still teach the boy.

"What's going on here?" Emma called out frantically, taking in the scene that unfolded before her, while Robin tried to determine whether or not he'd still need his bow. There were hectic red blotches on her otherwise very discolored cheeks, and she had a stitch in her side that she was pressing her hand to. "Are you alright?"

Rumple briefly affirmed, blinking at the sun, and watched Henry teleport himself down to the ground. He was there with him in an instant. "What were you thinking?" he hissed into the boy's ear as he embraced him, solely for the purpose of smacking him on the back of his head for blatant stupidity.

They'd never hear the end of this, if Emma ever found out what had really happened. Close calls of this kind were so utterly non-beneficial to his relationship with Henry's mother, never mind the dull headache all this was giving him. He'd certainly have some issues to settle with his grandson privately as soon as they'd all calmed down, killed the wolves, and gotten out of here.

XXXxxxXXX

"You know," Bae told David and John Little resolutely, putting down his mug of ale and wiping his mouth on his sleeve as he sat back in his chair across the table from them, "we need a change of plan here."

They were all weary, and the ale and the humble meal they were sharing was in the kitchen of the castle. It had been another long day of setting traps for timberwolves and killing them before they massacred the farmworkers that were readying the fields between the castle and the village for planting. Instead of just two or three sightings of the beasts a week, as they'd become accustomed to, the numbers of wolves in the area had been increasing steadily recently to the point where no one felt safe stepping outside the gates anymore at all, even under heavy guard.

David played with the food on his plate. He genuinely liked Baelfire because he was capable of some very pragmatic thinking, and he acted on his principles. Emma had once seen something in him, and he'd tried to be a good father for Henry since he'd known of his existence. A change of plan, however, was not to be made tonight, and not in this round. Plus, he was quite sick of hearing about the portal. Bae was convinced that there was no future for any of them here, least of all for himself and for Henry, and he made no secret of the fact that he intended to find a way for them to return to the World Without Magic.

Both David and John knew that Bae's biggest problem was his own acidic temperament and stubborn tendency to feel misunderstood at the slightest hint of disagreement with anything he said or did. He was a loner by nature, and as such, he'd lose his composure and behave like a wild boar on a rampage whenever things weren't going exactly the way he'd have liked them to. Not that John couldn't relate to any of this himself, truth be told, but Bae didn't seem to understand that running this place was only possible hand in hand, with your wits about you, and a will to find compromises that would sit well with everyone concerned.

"If you have any _new_ ideas you'd like to share with the council, then we should discuss them tomorrow," David retorted quietly, mashing his stewed turnips. He noted that the expression in Bae's eyes hardened, and the lines around his mouth became more prominent.

"The more we kill, the more will come," the sorcerer's son finally replied, raising his voice and slamming down his knife. "We're losing lives here."

David was well aware of that fact. Abandoning the fields was not an option, though. He was about to tell him so, but Bae was already pushing back his chair to leave. Dropping his head, he was feeling anything but _charming_ right now, and rubbed his brow, deciding to let him go. He just didn't have the patience for this tonight.

This entire situation couldn't be very comfortable for Bae: he was neither here nor there at the moment, having been cut out from every major decision that had ever been made here, even the ones concerning the whereabouts of his son. David kept wishing that Rumple had taken Bae along on his journey to the Ice Palace. It might have done them both the world of good, but since he'd been gone for days after the argument he'd had with his father in the Great Hall, he'd simply missed his ride and grudgingly stayed behind in the end. David had half expected him to go after them, but, strangely, he'd chosen not to.

When Charming was more himself again and tried to find Bae the next morning in order to have that long overdue and hopefully validating talk, he was missing again. For some days, they assumed that he might have followed Henry after all. They were wrong, but they didn't know that yet.

Rumpelstiltskin wasn't the only deal-maker in this kingdom. He'd taught his son well, and even Ernmas, who was standing on the other side of the portal opposite him in the tunnels beneath the ruins of Regina's palace, had to admit that she was rather inclined to take the bargain he was finally ready to suggest.

XXXxxxXXX

Mercifully, the fog began to clear, revealing an oddly flat, but rocky topography ahead. The constantly changing light was affecting the prominent shades of greens and greys that unfolded before them with every cloud moving in front of the sun. The clouds here seemed to mark off their time differently than they would elsewhere in this realm. They swept across the heavens at an astounding speed, as though the ocean winds were near, casting eerie shadows on the bare, open _Burrens_ that lay between them and the mountain range wherein the Glass Mountain was to be found. When they receded, there was so much brightness on the vast, solid stone plain all of a sudden that it made Jefferson's eyes water in protest, and he halted for a minute, shielding them with his hand.

The Hatter knew that progress would become increasingly arduous in this terrain, and it was getting colder the further north they went. This was as lonely a corner of any world as he'd ever come across, and it would provide them with no form of shelter. There wasn't a tree or a bush anywhere in sight; nothing to light a fire with, and no place to duck in from the sleet and snow that were imminent. No living creature could survive on the mosses and rust-colored or yellow lichen that freckled the karst-landscape, and both wind and rain had worked their way deep into the furrowing, criss-crossing cracks and crevices in the limestone pavements, relentlessly washing away at any organic residue that might have found its way into the grikes to sustain them.

Only here and there a precious few more sophisticated plants or wild flowers grew, where seeds from other, friendlier parts of the world had been lost by the breeze that had carried them so far, it would have seemed preposterous not to bravely take root. Supported by stochastically improbable amounts of nourishment, they'd either survive the winter or die. But even if they did make it, you had to look very closely to find them: sprinklings of their pink and purple blossoms appeared only for a brief interlude in the eternal grey.

Jefferson shuddered, but commenced walking again.

The Goblin King lifted Roland up on his shoulders and began whistling a haunting tune that seemed to follow no logical melody, but strangely turned each step that they took into a mile, and each mile that they went into seven. Sooner than expected, the Hatter could see the winding clear and silver towers of the Ice Palace jutting into an azure blue sky above the stronghold. Lean, curving outlines glistened liquidly and reflected the sun like the last ice crusting on a moving water surface at the end of the dead season.

XXXxxxXXX

Raven stood in the Hall of Mirrors at one of the huge arcading windows overlooking the valley beyond the Glass Mountain. She knew that this might be the last time she did so. Morrigan was almost free; she was already calling to her servants, and there was nothing the younger fairy could do about it right now. She was alone at the palace, but she'd observed the citadel come to life within these last weeks, as more and more of her kind came flooding back to the birth-place of their ancestors. The portals were still sealed, and they would be until the seventeen Gatekeepers arrived, so at least her sister would not be wreaking havoc in any other world but their own. Raven would have to leave soon, if she loved her life and wanted to have a realistic chance to gather strength, a following, and the means to return and fight her – and she did.

She waved a hand over the glass of the enormous pane in front of her, and it fogged over, only to clear again in an instant, showing her several of the convoluted alleyways of the citadel in quick succession.

She could see a lot of her kinsmen settling into an uneasy routine of sorts. Some that were Ancients had been reclaiming the blue limestone houses they'd been cast out of. They were sweeping floors into the narrow, winding cobblestone streets, opening windows and cleaning off furniture. Children were playing games of hopscotch and hide-and-seek, while the adults were setting themselves up for their stay. Other fairy folk, who had never been here before, were wandering around, eyes wide and taking in the dark, solid, methodically planned and well-constructed city, where every single one of its stone-built one- or two story dwellings had elements of strange, ornate carvings in the keystones and cornerstones of its arching doorways and stained glass fitted window frames. The copper sheeted roofs upon their timbre trusses gleamed in the sun as though they were new, bathing the entire fortress in a golden light that reflected for miles and miles.

The tremendous outlays of quality, costly material, highly skilled manpower, and, ultimately, _time_ were visible in every detail and at every corner you turned. Raven knew from her mother's recounts that it had taken decades to build the first founding structures into the remote mountainside. It would have been their home, and she would have loved to see it prosper once again. Perhaps she still would.

She glanced at the portal where Morrigan was already stirring behind her, and then up at the fresco. The familiar faces looking down at her were a good memory to take with her into the citadel. The sorcerer would come, and when he did, she'd be back.

A pack of sixty or more timberwolves was gathering at the lower east gate. They were hungry, as they had been for all the time their mistress had been away, and they snarled and snapped at each other. The fairies were wary of them, but they had no way to keep them out when the last particle of ice around Morrigan's heart dissolved and released her, and the gate would no longer stay shut. At her call, the black beasts poured liquidly up through the streets and alleyways towards the palace like a black river. The wards Raven had cast would prevent them from desecrating it with their presence, and they wouldn't harm the fairies, but they would stand guard outside the palace's entrance, waiting for the Gatekeepers to come.

Morrigan stepped out of the portal, the illusionary form of Regina's hair and clothes dripping wet about her. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, pinching it to clear the last of the water from her nostrils before she realized she was doing it. Her gaze fell first upon the huge window front of the Hall, before it wandered to the murals on the ceiling, taking in the riders and the dreamscapes they were crossing. She felt herself trembling with rage. This delay she hadn't counted on. Oh, the pain she was going to inflict upon that wretched sister of hers.

She'd been so close to doing this quietly; the boy and the book could have spared them all so much trouble, but now every fairy in this entire forsaken world had come crawling out of the woodwork to complicate things. This was exactly what she'd been hoping to avoid, and it changed the game. No matter, she'd play it anyway, she resolved, and took a few deep breaths. Looking down at herself, she decided that her ruined attire was altogether impropriate for the setting. Silver and blue, she mused, as the colors spread over her torso and down her thighs, weaving a perfectly figure-hugging dress of glittering electric indigo and Roman silver to replace the drenched rags her captivity had reduced her to wearing. Satisfied with the result, she went exploring.

The citadel was astir with the news of the wolves at the palace doors. There was no such thing as panic or fear, though; just a reasonably composed kind of anticipation of what was to come. No one took notice of Raven, who had donned a grey, hooded cloak and walked among her people inconspicuously until she had found the person she was looking for. She grasped Nova's arm and watched the other fairy's face, as the apprehension that was initially written on it turned into a genuine, heartwarming smile, and Nova wrapped her arms around the friend she'd thought lost so many eons ago.

**OOOoooOOO**

**Thank you for reviewing: cynicsquest, CJ Moliere, Grace5231973 and Twyla Mercedes - am very grateful for feedback, as always.**

**Special thank you to my brave and brilliant Beta, cynicsquest, for walking this road with me.**

**Next: Belle and Red literally stumble across an old bag who's been down on her luck since anyone can remember. Maybe we can manage to make a pale little creature of the dark happy yet.**


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